


Stories from The Oasis

by shopgirl3599



Category: Ready Player One - Ernest Cline
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-07
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-04-03 07:31:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 41,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4092433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shopgirl3599/pseuds/shopgirl3599
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My name is MoonChild_Blue. And this is my story. </p><p>It's a story that I will tell as it goes along, because that way we will all be surprised when we learn the final outcome. </p><p>I am a school teacher at the state school S4-MW-3599 on Ludus II - teaching English Lit and Oasis History.</p><p>Today I received a silver key, delivered to my cubby hole in the staff room at 3599. A silver key that is purportedly a final gift from my mother. Which, I suspect, doesn't sound all that surprising except that I don't have a mother and have no idea what the key is for, or who it came from.</p><p>My name is MoonChild_Blue, and this is my story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Introduction

**Author's Note:**

> #std_disclaimer
> 
> The Oasis, Parzival and other characters, planets and situations belong to Ernest Cline.
> 
> Other copyrighted material belongs to the copyright owners, and I am just playing with it. 
> 
> The story, original plots, original characters and planets belong to me (shopgirl3599) and I will take it somewhat amiss if someone takes them from me without my permission.
> 
> #notes
> 
> While this is a story based on "Ready Player One", it is not fanfiction in the traditional sense. Art3mis, Parzival and the other major characters get mentioned, but this is more a story set in the world of Ready Player One than a story about the characters from Ready Player One.
> 
> It is actually a lot of previously written short stories that I previously wrote, tied together by a new over-arcing story.
> 
> Enjoy.
> 
> #additional notes
> 
> Since apparently the film is very, very different from the book, I thought I would add an extra note to make it clear this is based on the book. I haven't seen the film and might not for a long while. So if there are any dependencies from the film, that's why.

0x00 - Introduction

My name is MoonChild_Blue. And this is my story. 

It's a story that I will tell as it goes along, because that way we will all be surprised when we learn the final outcome. 

It’s a story that starts with my death, but don’t let that put you off - I am not a ghost, nor am I a vampire, a zombie, an inferius or any other type of undead creature that you might have heard of. 

I am actually a school teacher at the Scottish State School S4-MW-3599 on Ludus II - teaching English Lit and Oasis History.

My teaching name is Miss Josephine Gray and it is possible that some of you who are reading this were taught by me - I have been teaching for eight years and a lot of students have passed through my classes in that time.

MoonChild_Blue is the name I go by most often in The Oasis, and the one under which I have had most of my adventures, my triumphant moments and my less than than triumphant moments.

My third name - my real name (the one I was born with out in the real world) - is known only to five people, and I intend to keep it that way. 

Today was the first anniversary of The Battle of Castle Anorak - sometimes known as The Battle of Chthonia and The Battle For The Egg. It also marks the first anniversary of my death. 

And it is also the day that I received a silver key, delivered to my cubby hole in the staff room at 3599. A silver key that is purportedly a final gift from my mother. Which, I suspect, doesn't sound all that surprising except that I don't have a mother and have no idea what the key is for, or who it came from.

My name is MoonChild_Blue, and this is my story.


	2. Qua Nos Es

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you want to know where you are going, it's important to know where you've been and where you are.

1x00

Like everyone else in The Oasis, I remember where I was when I learned of James Halliday's death. I was, it will not surprise you to learn, in school, teaching a lesson on Oasis History to my fifth year class.

And while I usually didn't allow students to receive email in the class, the announcement by Headmistress Sasser - that James Halliday had died and there was a message for all Oasis users - was reason enough to break that rule.

My entire class sat in silence, watching Anorak's Invitation. Even with the generic classroom protocols turned off, you could have heard a pin drop as the video played out.

Of course - the silence ended as soon as the video did, and the classroom exploded into noise. I let it run on for a few minutes - mostly because I was too shocked to do anything else - but then attempted to regain control. Which, I soon realised, was an utterly futile endeavour. After another five minutes of trying to get the students to concentrate on the lesson, I dismissed them all and let them go - it was the last class of the day, and there was only around twenty minutes left, so I figured there wasn't much to lose.

I also realised soon enough that I wasn't the only teacher to do this - less than ten minutes after Anorak's Invitation had finished, the entire school was nearly empty. Almost all the students, and a not inconsiderable portion of the teachers, from S4-MW-3599 (the school I teach at on Ludus) had gone to start looking for Halliday's Egg right away. 

Me? I had decided as soon as I'd seen the video message that this was not something I wanted anything to do with.

1x01

Like most other people in what is now called The Scottish Isles, I grew up in The Oasis. It was released the year after I was born, and almost at once my father saw the benefit of letting his daughter play in a fully interactive world. The fact it was a cheap source of babysitting was just a bonus in his mind - to him, the fact I could explore anywhere, go anywhere and had access to an almost limitless supply of books, educational programs and shows meant it was far beyond anything he could entertain me with in our one bedroom house.

Of course, when time allowed, he came with me and we went on all sorts of interactive adventures together. At first they were pretty basic - when you are just learning to toddle, to talk, to understand the world around you then you can't really be expected to fight monsters or explore the lost city of Atlantis.

But as I grew up - as I got older and learned to do more - the adventures would grow with me. On my eight birthday, he and I explored the ruins of the ancient pyramids in Egypt. A year later, we went spelunking through the ice canyons on Mars.

My father did express a worry that I was becoming detached - spending too much of my time in the virtual world, as opposed to the real one. But by that point the real world was running out of oil, running out of energy and just running out of time. So while he continued to worry, my dad didn't mind that I spent more time in a place that made me happy.

By the time I had finished sixth form, I had decided I wanted to be a teacher. The world was going to hell in a hand basket, and although I had no idea what to do about it, I was a big believer that education was the silver bullet - that if you teach the next generations properly, then maybe they can solve the problems of today and the problems of the future.

I spent four years at teacher training college, during which I got a degree in English Lit and a degree in The History of The Oasis, which was a common subject. By then, The Oasis had been running non stop for twenty one years and had already become a major part of humankind's culture. People conducted business there, they went to school there, they worked, played and relaxed there. It was fast invading every aspect of human life - although invading suggests it was against the will of the human race, which could not have been further from the truth.

My father wanted me to teach in The Oasis from the get go. He knew that I had big ideas, and a big imagination, and that the virtual classrooms would allow me to give voice to that imagination and use it to the fullest.

But while The Oasis was fairly universal when I graduated, it wasn't all encompassing and there were still students and kids who had no access to it. Kids whose parents were not as well off as my Dad (although we were by no means rich, we were not poor either. Based on my knowledge of 20th century history, I would say we were lower middle to middle class. A distinction which, in 2033, was almost non existent) and who couldn't afford the connection to The Oasis.

I went to work in the local state school, and taught there happily for the next four years, until the decision was taken by Holyrood to refit every school in The Scottish Isles with Oasis consoles, and to pay for an Oasis account for every student in the country. 

(After voting for Independence in 2014, Scotland had actually prospered a great deal in the following years. And when the energy crisis hit, it was one of the few countries that remained self-sufficient for a long time. Because of this, and because of the chaos that was - at that time - engulfing England, Wales and the newly reunited Ireland, Scotland put forward a proposal for the country to reunite under Scottish rule. There was some resistance, but after it became apparent that England would fall into complete and total anarchy, Westminster eventually capitulated and - on the 1st of May, 2027, exactly 320 years after the first Act of Union was signed and a mere twelve years after Scotland had seceded from The United Kingdom - The Scottish Isles were created by the unification of all four countries.)

The Oasis had had a functioning "public school" system for nearly a decade before 2037, and The Scottish Isles state school system - known colloquially as "S4" - was incorporated into that. Set up on Ludus, The S4 Schools were under the umbrella of The Oasis PSS, but were allowed to operate on their own for two main reasons. The first was that the educational standards, curriculums and methodologies were so different from the American ones that it would have been impossible to integrate them. The second, and far more important one as it turned out, was the five hour time difference between GMT and Oasis Standard Time (OST.) Based on the standard OPSS school day, students from The SI would have been attending class from 2pm to 9pm, which would have caused unbelievable chaos for students and teachers alike. Instead it was decided the S4 school days would run from 4am to 11am OST (9am to 4pm GMT.) This had the added bonus of freeing up the afternoons (in The Oasis) which allowed the S4 Schools to compete in the various sports tournaments organised across the OPSS on Ludus.

Following the refit (which took all of about a week - it just involved putting consoles on all of the desks and upgrading the internet cables to provide the highest speed access they could) I went to work at S4-MW-3599. Each school created under the Scottish State School System ("S4") was given a designation based on where it located in The Scottish Isles (my school was located in the mid-west) and a number based on what type of school it is (3 is a secondary school) and the number of the school (599.) And I have been working there ever since. 

The school covers the five senior years and the two sixth form years - students from the age of 11 to 18. In the eight years I have been teaching there I have seen two years go all the way through the school and taught over two thousand students. And that doesn't include those who I taught before I joined S4.

And I could not imagine doing anything else.

1x02

Based on the video alone, it was apparent that - if you were going to triumph and find Halliday's Egg - you would have to know a great deal about the 80s. More specifically the 80s in America, which - according to reports - James Halliday considered the golden age of society (and given the state of the world now, I could hardly disagree.)

I was born in 2011 and raised in Blackpool in the mid west of what was then The United Kingdom, and knew very little about America in general, let alone the period between 1980 and 1990. And, if I was honest, I had very little desire to learn anything more about it. Keeping up to date with Oasis history was hard enough - the sheer size of the virtual environment meant that new "historic" events (a pair of words that really do not belong together) were happening every day. And with the broadcast of Anorak's Invitation I suspected that the next few years would see a great deal more events added to the already impressive history that The Oasis had.

Right there - as the class was emptying and students were heading out to seek their fortune - I decided that, if I started searching for Halliday's Egg then it would end in one of two ways.

First - I would spend a lot of time, effort and probably money in searching for The Egg. But given that I knew nothing about America in the 80s, and had no inclination to learn anything about it, I would probably not get very far, and I would have to watch someone else get to the prize first.

Second - whoever found The Egg first would gain control over The Oasis. They would, quite literally, end up ruling the world. Which was not a job I really wanted all that much. I enjoyed teaching. I enjoyed the odd quest that I did in my spare time. I enjoyed spending time with my father and the friends I had made during teacher training and at S4-MW-3599. The idea of having complete and total control over the 27 sectors and all the tens of thousands of planets within kind of scared me. And - given that three days before - my father and I had faced off against an army of berserkers and sandworms on a desert planet in Sector 19, there was very little that really scared me any more.

Half an hour after the broadcast of Anorak's Invitation, the school was almost completely empty. I walked outside to find the car park equally empty - the only vehicles left were mine (a refurbished Viper from the classic video game Elite named The Erudite Emerald) and Headmistress Sasser's (also - oddly - a Viper, but this one was from the original Battlestar Galactica.) I entered my ship and set course for home, wondering if there would be any students in school the following day.

1x03

Over the next five years, I kept an eye on the progress of The Quest (as I had come to think of it) - a task made a great deal easier by the fact there was no progress made. By anyone. The scoreboard that had appeared after Anorak's Invitation had finished hadn't changed, and although a large number of "gunters" (as they had become known) had appeared on any number of news programs claiming to be one step away from getting The Copper Key. Even when Steven Pendergast had decided to reveal The Limerick to the rest of the world, it made no difference. No one was any the wiser as to the location of the first key, or if they were, they weren't saying.

Because of the lack of progress, the media interest (both in The Oasis and the real world) had diminished to almost nothing. Every so often there would be an explosion of interest - someone would claim to have discovered a major clue, or the media would focus on a planet, or a specific location and the gunters who were still active would flock to it - but then it would die down again and the media would move on to the next celebrity scandal or PVP Tournament.

Throughout all this, I continued to teach. The exodus of students that I - and most other teachers - had feared never really materialised. Yes - the first few weeks after the video was published the number of students in class went down, but then they slowly came back up again. Whether this was because most of the students were not old enough to have acquired the significant amount of wealth that was required to properly hunt for The Egg, or (as was considered more likely) most of the students only had access to The Oasis because they were issued Oasis Consoles for school (and - consequently - would lose that access if they were expelled for failing grades) was never entirely established. 

We lost three teachers to The Quest - they had decided they wanted to be gunters and to find The Egg themselves. But, given the state of employment in The Oasis and the fact that being a teacher was considered quite a high profile job, we managed to fill the positions pretty quickly.

It was also helped by the fact that getting a teaching job in The Oasis was a lot easier than it was in the real world. A number of teacher training colleges had opened up across The Oasis, with their qualifications and accreditations being accepted by the various school systems on Ludus, and then there was the fact that Ludus - the entire planet and everything on it - was in a no PVP zone.

Following Operation Yewtree and the other investigations at the start of the third millennium, the Ministry of Education - such as it was - got paranoid about child abuse and the potential for child molestation, so every teacher went through a very strict background check, and every new teacher had to go through the same check.

I didn't mind - I entirely understood where they were coming from, and when I was at school no less than four of my teachers were arrested for child abuse related offences. 

However, given that the whole of Ludus was a no PVP zone (which prevented fighting and bullying of any type), and every single school - whether it was part of the OPSS or S4 or any of the other school systems on the planet - had very, very strict software protocols that forbade teachers to touch or otherwise physically interact with students, there was absolutely no way that teachers could abuse their position, or their pupils.

Of course, there were areas were it didn't apply - sports fields and courts, boxing rings and so forth. But even then the protocols had to be turned off by the Headteacher of the school and they could only do it for the length of the event that was taking place. (One of the most famous, and funniest, moments in my school's recent history was when Headmistress Sasser forgot to turn off the PVP protocols at the start of the Intramural Boxing Tournament of 2041. True, she noticed five minutes into the first fight, but still - it was pretty hilarious watching two people trying to beat the crap out of each other when the software that powered The Oasis was physically preventing them from touching!)

But aside from those areas, it was impossible for a teacher to touch a student and vice versa and so the background and criminal checks for new teachers were a great deal more relaxed than in the real world. Which certainly made for easier recruitment.

During those five years, my English Lit class didn't vary all that much - while there were new books being produced all the time, the classics (for want of a better phrase) don't tend to change all that much from year to year. Shakespeare, King, Montgomery, Tolkien, James, Meyer, Cline - all stories that are read and re-read by billions of people across the world every day. 

My Oasis History Class, however, varied a great deal. Partly because of The Quest - every week I did a catch up class on things that had changed and where The Quest was up to - but also because new stories were discovered every day. When I started teaching, no one had heard about the mass sponge migration, or about the bug in The Oasis code that created The Seven Sector Portal. And - as The Quest progressed - people were discovering more and more about Halliday, Morrow, Underwood and the other major players in the foundation of The Oasis.

So, five years after Anorak's Invitation, life had returned to normal, more or less. I, and the rest of The Oasis (the rest of the world) kept an eye on the scoreboard and the progress of The Quest, but honestly - by that point - no one really expected The Egg to be found.

Then - as you know - everything changed.

1x04 

Innovative Online Industries (IOI) is a multinational company that I am almost certain you will have heard of at some point in your life. They are the biggest ISP in the world, and chances are that your connection to The Oasis is provided by IOI. Much like The Psi-Corps (an evil, insidious organisation that wanted to rule the known universe in a series called Babylon 5), IOI have offices in very major city in the country, and branch offices in most of the large towns. Their argument for this is that by being local, they can better respond to the needs of their customers and to the needs of the country they are in as a whole. And for all I know, that is the truth, but - given their actions during The Quest - I am extremely suspicious about their future plans, and I know I am not the only one.

The formation of The Sixers - an elite division dedicated to finding Halliday's Egg and thus gaining control of The Oasis - was something that filled me with a lot of dread. Part of the dread was self-interest - The Oasis had become, more or less, my whole world, and the idea of having to pay for it was just something I could not comprehend. But the biggest part of my fear was what Holyrood would do in response. If IOI got their way, and started charging a monthly fee for access to The Oasis, then I suspected the OPSS, S4 and all the other "free" school systems would collapse and vanish, destroying the future of millions of students in the process.

James Halliday, before he died, had set up a foundation so that the OPSS would always be funded. However it wasn't clear whether the funding would cover students access to their school in the event that IOI started charging. And Halliday's fund only covered the American public school system - all the other countries were pretty much at the mercy of their respective governments.

Holyrood had backed the refit, and had paid for The Oasis consoles, because it was a one off cost. Students used the same console all the way through school, but - once they finished their education and left school - they had to purchase their own consoles, or find a job that gave them a console as part of their employment. And while consoles occasionally needed replacing (either due to natural wear and tear, or because of accidents or other such things) the costs for running S4 were fairly consistent and - even though it covered the whole of The Scottish Isles - relatively cheap.

But if - suddenly - the government had to pay a fee every month for every student, then the cost would escalate astronomically. And given the precarious nature of the country as it was, I had no faith that Holyrood would continue to support it. Which would either mean that school in The Oasis would become the playground of the rich - that students from poorer backgrounds wouldn't be able to attend and would probably be just forgotten about - or the entire system would be shut down and education in The SI would return to what, I hate to say, I considered the dark ages. 

There was some hope that Cory and Wil (the two members of The Oasis User Council) might intervene if it became apparent that such a thing might happen, however the more cynical view was that The OUC only existed at the sufferance of Halliday, Morrow and the current caretakers of The Oasis, and that - if IOI took over - it would be dissolved before you can say "well that sucks."

I wasn't the only one who had these fears - most of my colleagues in S4 and a fair number in The OPSS were also terrified that if IOI took control of The Oasis, all of the philanthropic ventures that had been set up (such as the school systems) would be wiped out over night. But there seemed to be very little that could be done about it - Halliday either hadn't foreseen that IOI would form The Sixers, or he had foreseen it but was powerless to stop it.

Of course, as the years went by and The Copper Key remained unfound, some of the fears lessened. It was fast becoming apparent that - for all their wealth, their organisation and their resources - The Sixers were as in the dark as the rest of the gunters who were hunting for the egg on their own.

But when The Tomb was discovered - when Parzival, Art3mis, Aech, Daito and Shoto took the first five places on the scoreboard - it soon became apparent that I - and everyone else - had underestimated just how far IOI were willing to go to get control of The Oasis.

1x05

Ludus, as I said before, was a no PVP zone. This was because James Halliday thought that kids (of any age) should be able to go to school without the threat of bullying or of being shot, stabbed or killed in any number of other ways. And he wanted this philosophy to extend to anything to do with school, so rather than just coding the no PVP protocols in the school buildings, he made the entire planet a no PVP zone. This means that if students wanted to go off campus for lunch, or to go for a walk with their boyfriends/girlfriends/etc they wouldn't have to worry about the school bully waiting until they went off campus to attack them.

The benefits of this policy were welcomed by every teacher on the planet. Far too often in my previous job I had had to wade into the middle of a crowd of students who were watching a fight. And far more often than I wanted, I had had to stop one student (generally a boy, but not always) from being overly friendly with another student (generally a girl, but not always) who did not return their affection. So the idea of teaching in a school where it was impossible for students to fight or to attack each other was pretty much my idea of heaven.

However it also meant that when The Sixers came to Ludus and set up camp at The Tomb of Horrors - barricading it to ensure that only they could gain access - they could not be shifted by force. And even though the barricade was eventually destroyed, the actual army could not be killed. Nor could any of the gunters who turned up to take their shot at getting The Copper Key.

There was also another problem that became apparent after the barricade was erected - the no PVP zone only extended two hundred and fifty miles into the air (where the atmosphere ended.) Above that, the zone ended and already the gunter clans had established a blockade around the planet, preventing more Sixer ships from arriving.

The next morning, when eight more Sixer gunships arrived, a fire fight ensued which left all eight gunships destroyed, along with three of the blockade ships and - unfortunately - four students who were caught in the crossfire when they were just trying to get to school.

A few hours - and ten more dead students later - Headmistress Sasser was called to a meeting of Ludus Administrators, and when she returned she called us all into a meeting.

"I've just returned from a meeting with the Ludus administrators," she said, as she looked around the staff room, "It seems that they have realised this can't go on. Quite aside from the chaos on the planet, the risk of staff and students being killed in the fire-fights about the planet is way too big a risk to let it continue."

"We can't use the transporters?" Alvin Gleeson - the music teacher - asked.

"Have you seen them recently?" I asked in response. "Every single one is in use, twenty four seven as more and more gunters come to get to The Tomb and The Copper Key."

"Exactly." Sally Sasser nodded, "So they have decided that we need to move." She looked around at the surprised expressions. "After classes finish today - OPSS classes, not ours - the entire planet is going to be cloned to another location." A ripple of surprise ran around the staff room - cloning an entire planet was not something that was done every day, and given the vast number of gunters and Sixers on the planet it would have to be done very carefully.

"They are going to use a backup of the planet from before The Tomb was found." Sally continued, noticing the concerned looks on everyone's faces. "And it will only be the planetary code - The Tomb will not be taken with it." There was a wave of laughter this time.

"School is shut tomorrow, but you should be able to come back the day after," She smiled, "And hopefully we can get back to normal around here."

The next day, I decided to go and see what was going on around The Tomb of Horrors site. The fact I had an entire day off in the middle of the week was one reason, and the fact I couldn't be killed, or even injured was another.

What I saw was (at that point) possibly the most horrifying thing I had seen in The Oasis. 

In order to bring down the barricade - which turned out to be two barricades, as I discovered when I arrived - the gunter clans had been bombarding the area with all sorts of weapons, from both land and air. Just based on what I witnessed, there were grenades, RPGs, hellfire rockets, stinger missiles, cruise and exocet missiles. There was also a strong magic component in the attack, including magic missiles, blasting curses, fireballs and even a stream of killing curses. 

And while none of these had affected the avatars of either the gunters or the Sixers, the surrounding countryside had not fared so well. Most of the forest had been burned away and there were craters all over the ground, some twenty feet deep or more.

(It was at this point that I truly appreciated the no PVP zone that encapsulated Ludus. If the fighting had actually been real, and avatars were being targeted instead of the environment, I had no doubt at all that the rest of Ludus would have exploded into a war zone, and that most of the students at the schools in the vicinity of The Tomb would have suffered pretty badly. 

And now - looking back at that - I wonder if Halliday had known that this might happen. Not necessarily the war with The Sixers at the site of The Tomb, but that once the location of the first Key was found someone might try to secure it and stop everyone else from getting to it. And that by ensuring no one could die, everyone had an equal chance at getting it, whether they were Level 1 or Level 99. 

I've also wondered a lot about why he put it on Ludus. But that is speculation for a later date.)

I spent a few hours watching The Sixers file through the barricade, getting more depressed at every squadron that filed through, then I returned to my viper and set off for home. The blockade was still in force above the planet, but it was focused on the area between the primary stargate and the planet. And while it took me a little longer to get to my destination, avoiding the blockade seemed like the best idea - getting caught in the crossfire between the gunter clans and The Sixers was not the way I wanted to die (not that I wanted to die at all, but you get the idea.)

The following day, I got an early morning message from Headmistress Sasser that contained the co-ordinates of Ludus II and the location of S4-MW-3599, and normality (such as it was) was restored.

A day later, when the twin antimatter bombs were detonated over The Tomb, I was very glad that the schools had all been moved. 

1x06

The next five months were somewhat of a tense time - throughout The Oasis and more particularly in the various public school systems. After five years of being empty, the scoreboard continued to fill up. The fact that The Sixers had not been able to re-establish the barricade around The Tomb meant that large numbers of gunters were getting The Copper Key, but the fact that Ludus was still a no PVP zone (even after the schools had been evacuated and moved to Ludus II) meant that no one could prevent more and more Sixers from getting The Key as well.

Over the following five months, the scoreboard stayed the same and the tension that had started with Nolan Sorrento (the chief Sixer, Avatar Number 655321) had taken Position 6 on the scoreboard continued to grow on a daily basis. Although The Sixers were making no progress was something that was generally greeted with relief and not some little joy, the fact that The High Five had made no more progress was a cause of some not inconsiderable worry. The majority of my friends and colleagues didn't care which of The High Five won, just so long as The Oasis stayed out of Sixer hands.

There was also a growing concern that - following their somewhat offensive behaviour on Ludus - The Sixers would not hesitate to use the same tactics when the location of The Jade Key was found. And if The Jade Key was not located in a no PVP zone, then the casualties could be astronomical - a battle the likes of which had not been seen since the early years.

1x07

For most people - me included - The Oasis was a place of business, and a place we came to relax and have fun. But it hadn't always been like that. 

Back when it was first released, it was the latest incarnation of what used to be called Multi-User Dungeons, where players could come for epic quests - fights against dragons, ogres, trolls and other fantasy creatures. And during the early years - when new worlds were being created and new areas being opened up - there were some fairly epic battles between groups of users who had formed clans for the purposes of adventuring together.

However as The Oasis had grown up and started to expand beyond its original purpose, it became more civilized and the number of large scale conflicts started to decrease dramatically. There was still the odd skirmish and battle - The Oasis was still, at after all, a computer game and still a MUD - but compared to the early years, they were as kids fighting in a playground compared to The Somme and The War of The Roses.

Perhaps one of the most famous - and most bloody - battles was The Franholt Expedition. 

Around eighteen months after The Oasis was opened, a planet called Franholt 452 was created in Sector 9. It was designated as a questing planet - one where the GSS programmers could create and code any number of quests for people to play - and it soon became a popular destination. 

However word soon leaked out that one of the quests had an unexpected prize at the end of it. An artefact (a special, one of a kind object that granted the player who held it special or unusual powers) called The Rod of Osiris. Initially no one knew what it did, but given that Osiris was the god of the dead, the general theory was that this was either an incredibly powerful weapon - one that would give the user unlimited power - or an incredibly powerful defensive item - one that would make a user invulnerable or immortal.

Either way, word swept through the whole of The Oasis that this artefact was up for grabs, and two of the largest clans both decided that they wanted it, and didn't want anyone else to have it.

So, one bright May morning, two of the largest fleets ever assembled set off to secure the planet of Franholt. The first - a fleet of three hundred and sixty warships which belonged to The Cullen-Stanley clan - arrived a day later, and set up a blockade around the planet. Three ships, holding sixty players, landed on the planet to start the quest that would net them The Rod. 

An hour later, the fleet belonging to The Fishwick-Hendrix clan arrived at Franholt. This fleet - made up of two hundred and fifty warships and around a hundred or so smaller fighter craft - launched an all out assault on both fleet blockading the planet and on the members of The Cullen-Stanley clan who had gone to the planet's surface.

The fire fight lasted nearly a week and by the end pretty much everyone involved was dead, and The Rod still hadn't been recovered. The remnants of the two fleets slunk back to their home bases, and the two clans remained mortal enemies up until The Battle of Castle Anorak (at which point they united for the greater good.)

There were no official casualty figures for The Franholt Expedition, but given the size of the fleets that went to the planet and the size of the fleets that returned from the planet, Oasis Historians (of which I am one) put the number of players killed at around thirty five thousand. 

It was the biggest loss of life in Oasis history. At least, up until The Battle of Frobozz.

As for what happened to The Rod of Osiris - no one knows. Either the quest to gain it has never been completed, or whoever has it isn't talking. There is also a fair chance that after the battles of Frobozz and Anorak that it has been lost again. Rumours surface every so often, but just like The Staff of Aesculapius, The Diadem of Ravenclaw, The Cup of The Carpenter and The Nidus the real truth may never be discovered.

1x08

I was halfway through my school day when Art3mis found The Jade Key. Even though it was an English Lit class, every classroom in the school - and, I suspected, every classroom on Ludus II - had a copy of the scoreboard on display next to the digital whiteboards. The moment Art3mis found The Jade Key, the scoreboard updated and I more or less abandoned the class I was teaching, and instead switched the digital whiteboard over to show the four largest news feeds in The Oasis.

It soon became apparent that The Sixers must have had a way of tracking other players, because less than half an hour after Art3mis' name had moved up the scoreboard, all four news feeds reported that the entire Sixer fleet - well over a thousand ships - was converging on Sector Seven. We continued to watch the news feeds until the end of class, but - when nothing had changed - I dismissed the students and as my next class came in, I went back to my normal teaching routine, although I may have glanced at the scoreboard more often than I usually did.

During lunch the next day, the scoreboard - a copy of which was also displayed in the lunch room - updated again as Aech found The Jade Key and moved into second place. The entire lunch room burst into noise, then Headmistress Sasser switched on the screen at the far end and the room fell into silence as the story unfolded. Once again - a few minutes after the scoreboard had updated, news came through that the Sixer Fleet (currently spread throughout Sector 7) was now heading for for a small planet called Frobozz. 

At the time, the planet name meant nothing to me. Although I taught Oasis History, I have to confess I knew very little about the geography of the virtual world. I mean - I knew the location of some of the more important planets (Chthonia, Ludus II, Incipio and so forth) and, obviously, I knew the location of the planets where major historical events had occurred (the most recent being the somewhat disastrous Sixer attack on Neonoir during Ogden Morrow's seventy third birthday party) but the rest of The Oasis was pretty much a mystery to me. Then again the total size of The Oasis was around twenty seven thousand BILLION cubic kilometres, so I didn't feel that not knowing every name of every planet within it was that much of a sin.

The end of lunchtime came and went, and no one left. Classes were abandoned as every one stayed in the dining hall and watched as - a few hours later - Parzival's name moved back into second place. And then, as the end of the school day approached, the thing I had been fearing for nearly six months happened - all out war came to The Oasis.

The Sixer Fleet set up a blockade around Frobozz, attempting to deny everyone else access to the planet. And just like The Cullen-Stanley Fleet when they surrounded Franholt 452, The Sixer Fleet badly underestimated the size of the opposition they were facing. The combined might of the gunter clans launched a massive attack against the blockade, and - in just a few hours - it must have become apparent to The Sixers that they were screwed. But by the time they decided to scale down their blockade nearly eight hundred Sixer ships and around the same amount of gunter craft had been blown out of the sky. The casualties on the planet surface were equally horrific - estimates put it anywhere from ten to fifty thousand dead. A number which would rise higher in the following hours - though The Sixers seemed to be losing avatars at a faster rate than the gunters.

In addition, the fact that one of The High Five vanished from the scoreboard was truly depressing. By now, I - and a fair few others - had come to believe that The High Five were the most likely to complete The Quest and win the contest, and when Daito was killed (presumably in The Battle) it meant that a Sixer takeover came a step closer.

The one bright thing to come out of The Battle of Frobozz was the surprising amount of mutual respect that the gunter clans appeared to be showing each other. After The Sixers scaled back their blockade, the gunter casualty count dropped dramatically - to almost zero. It would appear that - despite the fact they were in competition to get to The Egg - the various gunter clans that had united to take on The Sixer armada did not fall to fighting one another once their enemy had vanished.

Since the end of the contest, a lot of time and effort has been put in to trying to work out why this would be the case. Even setting aside the fact that The Sixers were clearly the big bad - the enemy that everyone wanted dead - the rest of the clans, and the gunters, were still in direct competition. And yet, despite that, there were very few fights - either between the solos or the clans. A lot of theories have been put forward to explain this phenomenon, but most of these were put forward by people who were not gunters, and as such didn't really understand what they were talking about.

I just put it down to the continuation of the fight against The Sixers. While each gunter - whether a solo or a clan member - wanted to win The Quest and claim the prize, they also wanted to make sure that it was a gunter who won it, not a member of The Sixers. And so the more gunters who progressed in The Quest, the more chance there would be of "the right type of person" completing The Quest first and there by denying The Sixers the win.

But - then again - I am not a gunter, so what do I know?

1x09

The morning, as The Battle of Frobozz petered out, Avatar 655321 (Nolan Sorrento) cleared The Second Gate - closely followed by a slew of other Sixer Avatars - and the entire school seemed to go into mourning. No one could concentrate on classes, no one could be bothered taking part in any of the intramural or interschool tournaments that had been set up. The idea that The Sixers and IOI were now just one step away from getting Halliday's Easter Egg - and complete and total control of The Oasis - had sent everyone into a downward spiral that was almost impossible to get out of.

Two days later, the funk that had engulfed everyone I knew only got worse as the scores of Sorrento, and the other Sixers that sat atop the scoreboard, jumped again, indicating that they had found The Crystal Key and the end of The Quest was not only going to come soon but was probably going to bring about the end of The Oasis as we knew it.

The same day, Headmistress Sasser called all of the staff into a meeting and told us that she had talked to The Head of S4, of OPSS and had had a personal meeting with The Oasis User Council. And while all of the people she had spoken to were supportive and sympathetic, not one of them had been able to offer her any real hope. If IOI won the contest and took control of The Oasis, there was no way to know what they would do with The OPSS, with S4 and with the other school systems. 

She also told us that Holyrood was watching The Quest closely, and that while the government was making contingency plans to deal with an IOI take over, the cold, hard truth was that it would be nigh on impossible to fund every student should IOI start charging, and that if Sorrento and his lackeys got to The Egg first, then The Scottish State School System would be gone within a year.

Needless to say, this did not make us any happier. For the first time I regretted not taking part in The Quest from the beginning - I may not have been able to prevent things from falling out as they had, but I would have felt far less useless and helpless than I did at that moment.

IOI were about to destroy my world - and the world of several million others - and all I could do was sit and watch it on TV - unable to do anything to stop it or even delay it.

The fact that, later the next day, Parzival skipped back to the top of the scoreboard did not do anything to cheer me up. While having a member of The High Five (a name which had stuck, even after the death of Daito and the fact that only one of them was now anywhere near the top of the scoreboard) back in the lead was a good thing, he was twenty four hours behind The Sixers, he was an avowed solo and he was the only member of The High Five that had cleared the second gate.

And the happiness (as little as it was) that having Parzival back at the top soon vanished when - less than half an hour after his return to the lead - The Sixers set up a barrier around Castle Anorak on the planet of Chthonia, sealing off access to the third gate and to Halliday's Egg. Over the next two days - as Aech, Art3mis and Shoto all moved back into the top ten places after clearing the second gate and finding The Crystal Key - the combined forces of every gunter clan in The Oasis repeatedly tried to bring down the barrier, but every attempt was met with utter and abysmal failure. 

The Sixers had the location of The Egg, they - quite literally - had the key to the castle and they were the only ones who could use it. 

This situation continued for three weeks and then - well then came The Letter. 

1x0A

The word "unprecedented" is thrown around a lot - far more than it should be. It means that something has never happened before, or that - if it has happened before - so few people know about the previous occurrence that it might as well have not happened.

For example - describing The Battle of Frobozz as unprecedented is wrong in one way, but right in another. Fire fights in orbit of a planet - even on the scale of Frobozz - had happened a lot in the early years of The Oasis, and while they were less common in recent times, a space battle around a planet was not unprecedented. The casualties, however, were - more people died on Frobozz than had died in the whole of The Oasis in the previous twenty years.

Another example was the somewhat abortive attack on The Distracted Globe by The Sixers during Morrow's birthday party. While it was unusual that The Sixers - a group of mercenaries working for a private company - would attack a public gathering just two kill two people, there were a few incidents of it happening before. 

The most famous of these incidents was when the managing director of Capulet Consulting sent an army of five hundred avatars to find the managing director of Montegue Spaceship repairs and kill her and her entire family. The exact reason for this was never fully resolved, but the rumour was that it involved Clark Montegue (the son of Mary Montegue) pretending to fall in love with Jason Smith (the son of Simon Capulet) so that he (Clark) could steal a great deal of proprietary and valuable commercial information that he then sold to Capulet Consulting's main rivals.

On the 14th of July, 2020, the news feeds reported that Montegue Spaceship Repairs had been burned to the ground, and that Clark, Mary, James and Lucy Montegue were all dead following a brutal, violent and sustained attack from five hundred heavily armed men and more than a dozen fighter ships.

As someone who teaches English Lit, the misuse of language is something that annoys me. A little. On the scale of things that slightly irritate me (mosquitoes, students not working to their full potential) to things that really piss me off (IOI taking over The Oasis, the idea of returning to real world schools, fighting all the way through an epic quest only to find that the reward is two hundred credits) it is very low on the scale, but still - we have a language and people really should learn to use it properly. (Except Americans - I have kind of given up on them ever using English correctly.)

As a result, hearing people use the word "unprecedented" when they are describing things that are just surprising or unusual bugs me. And it is something I always avoid doing, no matter how much the temptation may be.

But Parzival's Invitation - the word unprecedented doesn't do it justice.

1x0B

Like everyone else in The Oasis, I remember where I was received a copy of Parzival's Invitation. Once again, it will not surprise you to learn that I was in school, getting ready to start my first class of the day.

The students filed into the classroom, but before I could start the lesson properly I heard the click of an old fashioned tannoy that indicated Headmistress Sasser wanted to address the school.

"This is Headmistress Sasser. Everyone - read your email. Now."

That was it - that was all she said. No explanation, no reason - just "read your email."

The students all looked round at me, and I shrugged, then gestured that they should go ahead. And - while they were reading their mail - I opened up mine. 

Almost at once I realised what Headmistress Sasser wanted us to read. Amongst all the spam, the advertisements and personal correspondence, was a single message from Parzival, with the subject line "A CALL TO ARMS."

_Fellow gunters,_

_It is a dark day._

_After years of deception, exploitation, and knavery, the Sixers have finally managed to buy and cheat their way to the entrance of the Third Gate. As you know, IOI has barricaded Castle Anorak in an attempt to prevent anyone else from reaching the egg._

_We’ve also learned that they’ve used illegal methods to uncover the identities of gunters they consider a threat, with the intention of abducting and murdering them._

_If gunters around the world don’t join forces to stop the Sixers, they will reach the egg and win the contest. And then the OASIS will fall under IOI’s imperialist rule._

_The time is now._

_Our assault on the Sixer army will begin tomorrow at noon, OST. Join us!_

_Sincerely,  
Aech, Art3mis, Parzival, and Shoto._

I stared at the message for a few minutes and, aside from being slightly confused at the use of the word "knavery", I was mostly wondering why I, who had never shown any inclination to be a gunter, had received it - then I turned and flicked the white board to the news channels. 

Apparently Parzival emailed it to everybody. Every single Oasis user had received this invitation. And every news feed, TV channel and other source of publicity. After flicking through a dozen news channels, it was all anyone was talking about. Half of the pundits were wondering if it was real, while the other half were discussing just how many of the gunters would respond to it. 

I looked back at my students, and realised that any hope of doing any sort of teaching had pretty much vanished. 

"Guys?" I called out, and the class gradually fell silent, "You can sit here and talk amongst yourselves, or you can go to the dining hall and watch the news," I paused, "I know you were all looking forward to finding out if Rilla and Ken get together, but I think that real life has just got more exciting than any fiction will ever be." There was a wave of laughter, then most of the students got up and left, while one or two continued talking.

I left the classroom as well - and was somewhat relieved to see most of the other classes had been dismissed along with mine - and walked out to the car park. With a final glance at the school, I climbed into The Emerald and took off.

Flying back to the apartment I kept on the nearby planet of Avonlea, I began to organise my affairs. 

When you are killed in The Oasis, you lose all your experience points, your equipment and your money. Because you could recreate your avatar so easily, there would be very little incentive to try to stay alive if there were not some major penalties for dying.

However there was a loophole that my father had introduced me to. If you put all your stuff in a holding account - one that wasn't connected to your avatar, but instead was independent - then if your avatar was killed, you could create a new one and retrieve your belongings.

I put most of my money and most of my other belongings into the account I had set up a few years before. Unfortunately, you could not use the account to hold experience points, and my armour and weapons were things I suspected I would need.

Once I had secured my future, I walked to the middle of the room and sat down on the floor. Opening up an email session, I sent one email to my father, another to my best friend and a third to Sally Sasser, all saying more or less the same thing.

"Dear Father/Cathleen/Sally,

By the time you get this, I will be on my way to Chthonia. I am not now, nor have I ever been, a gunter, but the future of our entire civilization hangs in the balance at this moment.

There was a film I watched a long time ago called Raiders of The Lost Ark. The hero - a man named Jones - was an archaeology teacher, and an archaeologist. Much like me, he spent his life learning about the history of the world and then passing the knowledge on to his students.

In this movie, he looks for The Lost Ark of The Covenant - the chest in which the remnants of the tablets that held The Ten Commandments are said to reside. 

The Ark is eventually found by the bad guys - The Nazis (who share a lot of traits with The Sixers, now that I come to think about it) - and Jones has a chance to destroy The Ark to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Nazi Leader (a man named Hitler.)

But when he is standing there with a rocket launcher pointed at the chest, his chief rival - a man named Belloq - says the following :-

_"All your life has been spent in pursuit of archaeological relics. Inside the Ark are treasures beyond your wildest aspirations. You want to see it opened as well as I. Indiana, we are simply passing through history. This, this *is* history."_

Well - I have dedicated my entire life to studying the history of The Oasis, so that I can pass the lessons on to the next generations. I have have spent my entire life in pursuit of history, and now - now I have a chance to see history in the making. 

And more than that. If the assault fails - if The Sixers win the day - The Oasis will fall into a darkness the likes of which is engulfing the real world as we speak. I have already lost one world, and I am not going to standby and do nothing as we lose another.

There is every chance my avatar will be killed, but I am willing to take that risk if it means I can help prevent IOI from winning. 

Sally - I will return to school as soon as I may, if I still have a job to return to.

Cathleen - take care of the twins and I will see you soon.

Father - know that I will love you always.

Take care,  
MCB."

I set the letter to deliver two hours later, then I put on my best armour, picked up my laser sword, lightening shield and blaster pistol and returned to The Erudite Emerald. 

Then I left my home for what I thought might be the last time, and set course for Chthonia.

1x0C

My reasons for joining The High Five's assault were pretty much what I had told my father in the letter. Part of it was because I had felt so helpless over the previous few months - watching The Sixers get closer and closer to winning and being unable to do anything to stop them - but also because however the assault on Castle Anorak turned out, it would be a defining moment in Oasis History.

If you were someone for whom studying history was your whole life, would you want to miss it?

1x0D

I arrived at Chthonia at about 10:30am the following day (Sector Ten was a long way from Sector One - the sector where Ludus II was located) and almost at once I realised the fears that no one else would answer The Invitation had been baseless. While researching Oasis history I had seen vid-clips and still images of a lot of huge fleets, but never in my life had I seen this many ships in one place at one time.

Three lines of ships ran from the local stargates towards the planet, and countless other ships were blinking out of hyperspace in the surrounding area.

It took me nearly half an hour to fly to the surface and land The Emerald, and even then I was over twenty miles from Castle Anorak and took another ten minutes to get there. 

The assembled army of avatars was - quite literally - unprecedented in size. Never before in Oasis history had so many people gathered in one place. And that wasn't counting the thousands that were arriving by the minute, nor the fleet of ships that were patrolling the sky.

No one seemed entirely sure what was going to happen, but about ten minutes after I reached the castle I saw three shapes flying down from the sky. As they got closer, they resolved in to three giant robot figures. 

Avatars scrambled out of the way to give the robots an area big enough to land in, and - as they touched down - I saw their names flash over their heads for a few moments. 

Art3mis. Shoto. Aech. 

A huge cheer went up from the assembled army, and Art3mis' robot waved to the crowd.

We stood in silence for a little longer, then another robot appeared in the sky line and flew down to land next to the other three. Even though it had no name above it, everyone knew who it was.

Parzival had - finally - come to Chthonia.

The next few minutes were the longest of my life. Rationally I knew that time was not crawling to a halt, but it really felt like that. Then the doors opened, and a group of eleven avatars came out. They were met with a huge chorus of boos - one that seemed to echo around the entire planet. But the boos quickly died down as all ten of the figures transformed into giant robots, and the eleventh - who I later learned was Nolan Sorrento himself - transformed in to a HUGE mechanical dinosaur. 

If I had thought that the silence that greeted Anorak's invitation was quiet, I realised it was a thunderstorm compared to the total, absolute and utter silence that met the appearance of MechaGodzilla in front of Castle Anorak.

A silence that last for barely two minutes, because - at 12pm exactly - there was a massive explosion and the barricade fell. For a few seconds no one could believe what they were seeing - Parzival had done it. He had kept his word and had broken The Sixer barricade. 

Then the truth of our situation dawned on us - there was nothing between us and The Sixer army.

The Battle of Chthonia - a battle for the very heart and soul of The Oasis - had begun.

1x0E

I don't remember much of the actual fighting. I know that - when the barricade dropped - I joined the charge towards the castle. I knew that I could do nothing about Godzilla and the other robots, but The Sixer ground troops were fair game. Our air support carried out wave after wave of attack, causing enough of a distraction for the infantry (for want of a better phrase) to surge in amongst the encamped forces and start killing left right and centre.

I fought my way up to the door of Castle Anorak, then bounced off it when I tried to enter. I was about to take another go at it when I heard a shout behind me and turned to find three Sixer Avatars charging towards me. I gave up on trying to enter the Castle, and waded back into the fray. 

While the air and ground forces were battling The Sixer army, The High Five were making progress. Most of the Sixer robots were down and out - pieces of them lay scattered all around and the tiny scoreboard display that was in the bottom left of my HUD was now missing ten Sixer numbers that had been there before.

As I continued to fight on the steps of the castle, I saw Shoto's robot sever Godzilla's arm, then I watched in horror as that self same robot was blasted out of the sky. Shoto's name vanished from the scoreboard and MechaGodzilla turned to face Parzival. A second later, Parzival's robot was sliced in half, but his name didn't vanish. Slicing at the nearest Sixer avatar, I watched Parzival fly over my head and land in the castle.

This was it - the moment everyone had gathered here to ensure. The High Five - now a mere three - were about to open the third gate. 

But then in what has since been described as either the most stunning act of bravery ever seen, or the most stunning act of idiocy ever seen, Parzival seemed to turn round and come out of the castle again. 

I could hear everyone around me asking themselves what in the name of Halliday he was doing, but the yells died down again as another huge robot - far larger than any of the ones we'd seen before - appeared in his place. 

"Ultraman!" A gunter near me yelled in surprise "He's ULTRAMAN!" Now I didn't know if Ultraman was a superhero, a robot or the quarterback for the New Freedonia Hippogryffs, but whatever he was, he was clearly far more powerful than Sorrento had been expecting.

Over the next three minutes, all fighting seemed to stop as everyone - gunter, Sixer and the rest - watched as Ultraman beat the living crap out of Godzilla. I hadn't seen such a one sided contest since "Thumper" McGraw had come out for a school boxing match against someone half his height and half his weight. That match had been over in less than thirty seconds.

This one took a little longer, but it was far more emotionally satisfying. Godzilla went down and stayed down. And when the escape capsule was blasted to bits, a cheer far louder than any I had heard before went through the entire army as Sorrento's name vanished from the scoreboard, and the top three places were reoccupied by Art3mis, Parzival and Aech. 

The three people in question then went back into the castle as the battle outside continued to rage. We were no longer fighting to get to the castle - now we were the defenders and The Sixers were the ones we had to stop at any cost.

In my time, I had fought beserkers, dragons, barbarians and - one particularly strange quest in Sector 27 - cheerleaders. But the six minutes after The High Five entered the castle were some of the hardest I had ever had. 

And just when it looked like we were going to prevail - like we could hold off the Mongol hordes and give The High Five the time they needed to clear the gate - we all died.

1x0F

In the latter half of the 20th century, mankind developed weapons that could wipe out an entire city in one go. And then - in a move that is typical of the species that I am a part of - they made them better, more powerful and smaller so that they were easier to transport to their target.

Atomic Bombs, H-Bombs, Nuclear Bombs - they were some of the most heinous weapons humankind had produced. But they were bound by the laws of physics. While they could annihilate whole cities, and kill hundreds of thousands at once, there were limits as to the damage they could do.

Weapons in The Oasis were not bound by similar limits. In fact nukes were considered pretty tame by Oasis standards - although this might be because the biggest danger of nuclear weapons (the radioactive fallout) wasn't something that was easily replicated in The Oasis and so all that was left was the concussive, blast and fire effects.

Anti-matter bombs, AK-bombs, MEMF devices - they caused damage on a scale that the designers of the original nukes could only dream of.

But all of those paled in comparison to The Cataclyst. It was, as far as anyone knew, the single most powerful weapon in The Oasis - so powerful that it had been considered an urban legend for as long as I could remember.

According to the story, The Cataclyst - when detonated - would kill every single avatar, NPC and creature in the sector that it was set off in. And, unlike most of the other weapons, there was no shield against it. Regardless of how far away you might be, if you were in the sector when it was detonated, you died. 

As I said, the general opinion was that it was a rumour - a story created by an over imaginative avatar who had been in a tight situation once and made up a weapon that would kill everyone so she could escape.

That rumour persisted right up until The Battle of Chthonia.

1x10

At first I watched in silent horror as the corpse of my avatar fell into the pit that had opened up beneath Castle Anorak. I thought maybe I had been distracted and one of The Sixers had managed to kill me, but then I realised there were thousands of other bodies in the area.

For a few moments, I sat in my flat - my real world flat - just staring at my Oasis console. I always knew that my avatar could die, but it had always been an abstract concept - one that I didn't give much thought to. 

Even when I went to Chthonia and joined the combined forces I hadn't given much thought to what would happen if I was killed in the battle.

After a few minutes of continuing to stare at my console, I realised that The High Five would probably be into the third gate, and that the future of The Oasis was being decided as I sat here staring into space. (It never occurred to me that The High Five might also have been killed by The Cataclyst - for some reason, my mind insisted that they were immune to such things.)

Putting my visor and gloves back on, I logged back into The Oasis and created an account under the same name I had had before. Oasis Avatar names had to be unique, but now that MoonChild_Blue had been killed, there was nothing to stop me creating the avatar again.

I reappeared on Incipio - the planet where all new avatars are spawned - and immediately I found the nearest bar and went inside. 

There were three screens showing the unfolding drama in Sector Ten. The first was showing a split screen view of Parzival and a Sixer avatar playing a video game. The caption underneath said that they were both in the third gate, and the video feed from Halliday's website had switched to this the moment that they had entered.

The second was showing a live shot of the devastation around Castle Anorak. The third gate was floating in mid air over a hundred foot wide crater underneath. The wrecks of spaceships, tanks and other craft that had been fighting in the battle were liberally scattered around the surrounding area, and the castle itself was a wreck.

It resembled the scenes I had seen from the two world wars that had engulfed the globe in the 20th century, except for one big difference.

There were no bodies. When an avatar dies, the body lies there for a few moments, then vanishes into nothing.

The third screen was showing a news report from a station based in Sector Nine. Following the huge explosion outside the castle, every single news agency in The Oasis had dispatched reporters to find out what had happened. And it was truly, truly horrifying.

Everyone was dead. Every single avatar in the sector had died at the same moment that I had. And not just those who had been fighting in the battle - there were planets that were thousands of kilometres away that had lost their entire population as well.

"There are no definitive figures for how many have died yet," The news reporter said in a quiet voice, "but given the sheer number of gunters and other avatars that responded to Parzival's Invitation as well as the size of The Sixer army that they went there to fight......" He paused, then closed his eyes, "The initial estimate is that more than half the population of The Oasis was killed when The Sixers set of The Cataclyst." For a few moments, the entire bar fell silent as what he had said sunk in. 

Saying "half the population of The Oasis" was the equivalent of saying "half the population of the world." Three to four billion avatars had died in less time than it takes to say it. 

Whatever happened with The Quest - whether Parzival could prevail or The Sixers would succeed - it was a fair bet that the coming weeks were going to be filled with chaos and mayhem the likes of which no one had ever seen before.

While I was considering this, there was a sudden explosion of cheers and applause from some of the other patrons. Looking over, I saw that Parzival was now dressed as an ancient knight and was walking up to a castle. A few other people in the bar were laughing, but most of us were staring at the screen in complete bemusement.

For the next ninety minutes we watched - sometimes in silence, sometimes laughing and sometimes cheering - as Parzival made his way through the film. We also watched as a Sixer avatar did the same thing, but about ten minutes behind. 

Then - as a man dressed in police uniform pointed at the camera and said "All right sonny, that's enough, just take off." - the screen switched again and we saw him stood in the centre of an array of computers.

"Halliday's inner sanctum." I hear someone whisper, "This is it - this is the final stage." I glanced at the other screen to see The Sixer avatar coming closer to the end of the film, then looked back. 

This time, the entire bar watched in complete and utter silence as Parzival played through "Adventure". Even when he returned to the final room, carrying a small, grey dot, no one made a sound. But then - when he crossed the threshold, and the image of an egg appeared on the far wall, the entire bar exploded into cheers and applause. 

This went on for sometime, and only increased when the scoreboard - displayed above the bar on a screen twelve feet high - changed again. One by one the list of names vanished, and in it's place was an image of Parzival's avatar dressed in Halliday's robes, and two words.

"PARZIVAL WINS"

1x11

And now it is one year later. I have just returned from a ceremony on Chthonia commemorating The Battle and those who died in it.

Which, I admit, was a bit of a strange experience. Especially since - two weeks after The Cataclyst was detonated - the newly formed Oasis High Council decided to bring back the avatar of everyone who had died because of the bomb.

The Oasis High Council was made up of five "seats" - the existing Oasis User Council represented one seat - Cory Doctorow and Wil Wheaton had been unanimously elected to that position - and Art3mis, Shoto and Aech (all of whom Parzival had brought back to life less than three hours after they had died) took three of the other four.

Obviously the final seat was taken by Parzival and it was he who had the deciding vote. The Great And Powerful Og had a "virtual" seat, in that he was an advisor to The Council but he did not want a vote of any type.

"James and I brought The Oasis into this world, and it is now time to pass it on to the next generation." was his only word on the matter - he had declined all interviews since.

Initially, there was no plan to bring everyone back. The Oasis was still a video game, and the terms and conditions of use were very plain and very well known. If you died, you died and had to start again.

However as the scale of the problem facing The Oasis became apparent, The Oasis High Council were forced to reconsider this position. 

It wasn't so much that half the population of The Oasis had died - at a cost of only 25 cents to create a new avatar, everyone who had been killed could easily afford to recreate their account and return to The Oasis.

However the terms and conditions also meant that the property, wealth and other related items that belonged to the people had been destroyed as well. Billions of credits had been wiped out over night. Businesses were foreclosing and going bankrupt left right and centre. The Oasis Stock Exchange had dropped over twenty thousand points in a single day, and trading had been suspended ever since.

Then there was the trickle down effects to consider. When I had died, The Euridite Emerald had vanished along with me. Millions of other avatars were in the same situation. And, as a result, all the businesses that were dedicated to selling spaceship fuel and repairing avatar ships were now in dire straits because half their customer base had gone. 

The other companies that took a big hit were the arms dealers - nearly a third of those who had died were high level gunters who made their living by completing quests and fighting in PVP tournaments. Now that their avatars had all been reset back to level one, they weren't buying bullets, swords, guns or armour as much as they had been.

The third major affect was one some of the quests themselves. While nearly all of those who had died in The Cataclyst were human avatars, the explosion had also wiped out every single NPC. A few of them were "employed" by businesses (as waiters, petrol pump attendants, prostitutes and secretaries) but most were coded as parts of quests. And while the quests - and the quest portals - remained, with no NPCs to act as bad guys or guides - the quests were all but useless. (This became such a problem that eventually every quest portal in Sector Ten was shut down until the NPCs could be recoded.)

After two weeks of discussion - during which The Oasis came very, very close to total and complete economic meltdown - The High Council announced that every avatar that had been killed by The Cataclyst would be re-spawned with the experience and belongings they had had when they died. If the avatar already existed, then the user using it would have to show they were the previous owner, or be forced to change their name so that the original owner of the name could reclaim it. 

In order to do this, The Oasis High Council took the unprecedented decision (and this time I really mean it) to shut the entire system down for twelve hours. During that time, no one could log in to it, other than the GSS engineers and The High Council.

When the system came back up, everyone could log back in to their original avatars. I found that I was back to the level I had been before I died, and that my property had all been returned to me. I also had my apartment back, and an email from Sally Sasser telling me I could come back to my job. I had been putting it off because I wasn't sure how many of my students would be back - a fair number of them, it turned out, had been on Chthonia for the battle - and the prospect of sitting in front of a half empty classroom was not one that filled me with happiness.

I also received emails from Cathleen and my father, both of whom had watched me die and were now quite glad that it hadn't stuck.

A week after the mass resurrection a number of lawsuits were filed by former Sixer avatars who felt that since they too had died in The Cataclyst that they should be included in the resurrection list. 

Needless to say, a large majority of The Oasis population did not agree with this point of view, especially given it was The Sixers that had detonated the bomb in the first place. However, in the interests of what he called "reconciliation", Parzival eventually announced that the lower orders of The Sixer army would be resurrected. 

It's possible that this decision was motivated by the destruction of IOI-1, the headquarters of IOI in The Oasis. Two days after the resurrection, an armada of five thousand warships - dubbed The Last Alliance of Elves and Men - launched an all out assault on the planet. It was apparently so unexpected and such a surprise that IOI couldn't raise a defence. Their fleet - which was still being rebuilt after Frobozz and Chthonia - was blown up on the launch pads, and every single building was razed to the ground. Several thousand avatars were killed and IOI operations were crippled for the next six months or so.

It also served as a stark reminder that while The Quest might be over, the gunters had long memories and though they had gone their separate ways, The Oasis still had a huge number of people who were willing to defend it from all those who would use it for ill.

It was a point well made, because when the bulk of The Sixer army was brought back - including their spaceships, fighter craft and other assault vehicles - there was a fear that another war would being. But the feared hostilities never materialized - IOI disbanded their Oology unit and all the avatars were assigned new IDs. 

Of course, it wasn't all plain sailing. Some of The Sixers refused to let go of the past, and went out looking for trouble. But it ended the same way every time - the avatar would end up dead and IOI would put out a statement saying it was nothing to do with them. After six months of this, it appeared that the malcontents learned their lesson, and decided to keep whatever anger they had to themselves.

The only other major event was the trial of Nolan Sorrento and a few dozen of his corporate lackeys. There was an attempt to prosecute the higher ups in IOI, but they all said that Sorrento was in charge of his department and made his own policy and that nothing he did had anything to do with them. It was obvious they were lying, but IOI was such a huge company in so many countries that no government wanted to stand up to them.

Sorrento, however, was another matter. The evidence that Parzival had produced - from Sorrento's own database - was enough to convict him and most of his associates, of murder, mass murder, terrorism, conspiracy to cause explosions, conspiracy to kidnap, conspiracy to commit murder and conspiracy to commit perjury. 

If he had won The Quest, and had been the new Anorak, there was no way he would have been convicted of anything. The Voice of Anorak is The Voice of God, and no country in the world would have taken the risk of imprisoning the new ruler of The Oasis.

But Sorrento had lost, and so eight months after The Quest ended, he was shipped off to Japan to serve life in prison for the murder of one of their citizens. Whether this had anything to do with the punishment for murder in Japan being hard labour is hard to say, but the American government didn't contest the ruling of the court and they let Sorrento go without a fight. Also - as an aside - one of the most popular channels in The Oasis is one that features a twenty four hour feed of Sorrento serving out his prison sentence. It has higher ratings than the next seven channels combined, and if ever you are feeling down, I suggest you go take a look at it. 

Since then, very little of interest (either personally or professionally) has happened. I am back teaching, and still finding it very rewarding. I am still doing the odd quest with my father and gaining more experience and items as a result. 

And up until this morning, I would have said my life was back to normal. But this morning - before I flew off to Chthonia in my new ship ("Raxxla's Folly", a souped-up version of the old Space Shuttle from the early days of the American Space Agency) - I found a small, silver key in my box at school. No markings, no indication of what it was for. All that came with it was a letter :-

_Dear Kim,_

_Your mother left this in my keeping, to be given to you at the right time._

_That time is now._

_From,  
A friend._

Given that I don't have a mother, and have never known who she is or what her name was, you can see how this piqued my interest. And, of course, the fact my real name - a name known only to five people - has the initials k.i.m., was something else that concerned me.

I turned down the chance to be a gunter, but now it appears I have a quest of my very own. 

A quest that, I have to admit, I am looking forward to.

(Sorry - I meant, of course, a quest to which, I have to admit, I am looking forward.)


	3. A Day In The Life

(5th of November, 2046)

2x00

It might seem like life in The Oasis is adventure, drama and excitement twenty four/seven. And - I have to admit - during the last few months of Halliday's quest, the virtual world did have more than its fair share of overly dramatic and exciting moments.

But now that The Quest is done, and the new "Anaorak" has been inducted, The Oasis is settling down again. 

And, to give you some idea of what The Oasis is really like, I thought I'd share with you an example of a typical, average day in the life of this Oasis user. A day like any other - with work and play and everything in between.

So - come with me, and I will tell you about the 5th of November, 2045. My 35th birthday.

2x01

I realise this might not come as much of a surprise, but I don't actually live in The Oasis. True, I spend so much of my time in there that I might as well live in it, but the truth is there (currently) some major limitations to The Oasis.

The major one being it's really not possible to eat or drink in there. The average Oasis Console Kit includes a visor and a pair of haptic gloves. And while you can buy more advanced Kits - all over body suits, for example - GSS and the rest of The Oasis hardware companies have yet to produce a Console Kit that can create food from thin air and feed it to you.

There is also the problem of exercise - without specialised equipment, the average Oasis user tends to sit in a chair and move around the virtual world using hand gestures and other methods, which is not the most healthy way to spend your day.

There are other issues as well - dealing with the....... well, lets call them the waste products that are generated by the human body is a necessity as well, and while it is possible to simulate the pleasures of the flesh within The Oasis, human procreation hasn't progressed to the point where two people on the opposite side of the world can create a child together without meeting. 

For these reasons, and a myriad of others, no one lives in The Oasis. Most people have a house, or a trailer, or a flat, where they keep their console. Broadband and WiFi is now so pervasive and so ubiquitous that there is almost literally no where where you can't find a connection.

I have a small two bedroomed flat that's about five minutes away from my school - while S4-MW-3599 exists in the virtual world, on Ludus II, the consoles are all housed in the refitted school building. A few students work from home - so to speak - but the majority come to the school.

My flat is very basic - given how little time I spend there, it didn't entirely seem worth while kitting it out with all sorts of stuff I would never use - but it has a bed, a kitchen and a bathroom, which is all I really need. The second bedroom has been converted into a high end Oasis room - with a treadmill and full body suit (as opposed to the visor and gloves I had at the school.)

I tended to use this room to exercise in the morning - running, swimming, fencing - pretty much anything that ensures my muscles are kept in working order and that I can afford to spend the rest of the day sitting down (although I rarely end up doing that - something I will explain later.)

After my exercise period, I have breakfast, then a shower, then I head off to work. It literally takes me around five minutes to walk to school, which is a good thing because while Scottish society hasn't crumbled as much as other societies around the world, the streets are not as safe to walk as they were when I was a little girl.

My father - who moved to Paris four years ago - thinks I should carry a gun with me whenever I go out in public. He's not wrong - it would make me feel safer. But another part of me thinks it would be a surrender - a final admission that SI is not going to get any better and we'll always be in this mess. And if I honestly start to believe that, I think I would just get too depressed for words.

Anyway - I usually arrive at school around an hour before the majority of the students, because, and this is where it gets kind of complicated to explain, while I don't live in The Oasis, I do keep a house in The Oasis, and I have to commute from that house to Ludus II every morning. The flight time in Raxxla's Folly from Avonlea (the planet on which my house is located) to Ludus II is about thirty minutes, so I have to ensure I am there before the students arrive. And it gives me a chance to sort through all my correspondence.

Which - this morning - was more than usual, since I was turning thirty five. 

2x02

It is generally considered axiomatic that there are no laws in The Oasis. This is mostly true, but the truth is that The Oasis itself has three major rules - that can be considered laws of The Oasis, and there are areas within The Oasis itself where laws have been established.

The three laws of The Oasis are First - you can not have a backup of your avatar. If you die in The Oasis, you lose your avatar and everything that belongs to it, and have to start again. True, there is a loophole that you can use to get round this, but there are no loopholes to save your experience or level - that's gone and gone for good. (Which is why The Resurrection, after The Cataclyst, was such a surprise. Never, in the history of The Oasis, had dead users been brought back to life, especially not on such a large scale.)

Second - you can not have more than one avatar. Avatars are linked to a users retinal pattern, and you can not use your retinal pattern to create a new avatar without killing your old one first. Anyone who is caught trying to create multiple avatars is banned for life, which - given the fact that The Oasis is used for nearly everything in the world now - is pretty much saying you might as well be dead. Not being able to access The Oasis is - for most - a fate worse than death, and there are very few people - practically no one - who would risk that penalty any more.

Third - you can not use someone else's avatar without their permission. Again - this is very hard to do, but anyone who tries gets banned for life. This rule was created back in the early days, and while it is still enforced, it is possible to copy the face and skin that another avatar is using, and if you turn off your name marker then it is entirely possible you can pretend to be them. Of course - even if you do this, you can't be the other avatar, and so you can't steal their money, their equipment and so forth. 

These are the only three rules The Oasis User Licence has, and they all make perfect sense, especially when you consider that The Oasis started life as a video game, and that the currency within The Oasis is probably the most stable currency in the planet and so very worth stealing.

Within The Oasis, it's very hard to steal from people, by the way. An avatar's inventory is attached to that avatar, and - aside from senior system admin staff - no other avatar can access it. Of course, if you really want to steal from another avatar, the easiest way is to shoot them in the head. When an avatar is killed, it drops all the equipment they are carrying, so killing someone then stealing their stuff is common practice in some parts of The Oasis.

And this is where the axiom that "there are no laws in The Oasis" came from. Back in the early days, when it was just starting to become a more civilized place, there was an attempt to introduce some kind of judicial system. But because The Oasis spread across every single country in the known world, every country wanted their own judicial system to be the one used to set up a legal framework in The Oasis. Eventually it became apparent that none of the governments was going to cave on this, and Halliday, Morrow and Underwood decided that The Oasis would be governed by what they called "Frontier Law" - in that people could look out for themselves. 

It does mean that The Oasis is not entirely the safest place in the world - if you accidentally find yourself in a PVP zone, you can end up fleeing for your life - but if the alternative would be a a virtual world filled with multiple court systems, requests for extradition and not being entirely sure what laws you have to obey on what planet, I think it is probably for the best.

Even if it does sometimes make you late for work.

2x03

I arrived at what used to be called George Formby Secondary School, went through the various security gates and passes, and into my primary classroom. (The school was only used during the day, and had around two hundred and fifty Oasis consoles, and a fair amount of other high tech equipment, so it was very well protected.) Reaching into my desk, I pulled out the gloves and visor, then sat down and put them on.

The log in screen came up, and after providing my password ("burning crop circles on my souls waves of grain") I saw the "Ready Player One" message flash up, then found myself in the same place I had been when I logged out - my desk in my house on Avonlea.

Avonlea was a small moon in Sector One, around half an hour away from Ludus II. It was originally built by someone who was a huge fan of The Green Gables series - the entire planet is filled with recreations of all the villages, towns and other locations from the books, as well as a number of NPC characters to make it feel like you are really there. However, because of the proximity to both Ludus and Ludus II, a few of the houses have been bought by teachers in the various school systems. 

I live in a representation of Patty's Place (which is in Kingsport in the books, but since that is visited a lot by tourists, my version is in a secluded part of the moon called K2) and I share it with two other teachers - one from OPS #1582 and one from the Australian school system. We get along okay, especially since we don't really have to live together and the house is mostly used to store all of our belongings when we are at work.

The other reason for having the house in a more remote area than the centre of Kingsport is we have a large landing field outside, where Raxxla's Folly, The Kayley and The Randgo. All three ships had been refitted to take off and land vertically, so while we didn't need a runway, we did need somewhere to park them at night.

After I appeared, I flicked open the virtual laptop and read through my mail. Along with the usual spam, adverts, quest news and Oasis announcements, I had five birthday emails. My father - even though I was meeting up with him after work - and some from the teachers at work. I also found a package waiting for me on the front step, which surprised me a little - deliveries in The Oasis were rare because you could give someone a gift by putting it in the sandbox area of their inventory or by sending a link to someone to do the same thing. I realised I was running a little late, so I took the package inside and left it in my room, then headed down to the back yard, and climbed into my shuttle.

Taking off, I flew up into the atmosphere and then out into orbit in the planet. Making sure that the path was clear, I kicked the shuttle into high gear, and programmed the navigation computer to take me to Ludus II by the quickest route.

Twenty minutes later, my radar pinged, and I saw the sight that I had learned to dread. Three ships were coming up behind me - from their vector it looked like they were coming from deep space, rather than any particular planet - and if they kept up the speed they were going at, they would reach me before I reached Ludus II. 

"Seriously?" I said under my breath, then sighed and flicked on all the defensive systems on The Folly. While it looked - from all appearances - like the old American Space Shuttle, Raxxla's Folly was actually surprisingly well armed. Quad mounted lasers on the front and rear, twin missile launchers and - in a move that surprised most ships I came across - a high velocity machine gun that was mounted on the underside the ship. (It fired small, metal slugs - slugs that moved so far and were so small that most defensive shields had no clue how to deal with them, and were capable of punching holes in the skin of most ships.)

The three ships came closer, and I finally got a scan on their registries. From what the computer reported, they were part of one of the former gunter clans (The Miller-Shanks) - one that had apparently taken to piracy to supplement their income. They had a reputation for being ruthless, which was worrying, but were also amongst one of the weakest clans - at Chthonia they had lost ninety percent of their ships and most of their soldiers. 

"You don't want to do this," I broadcast. "You lost enough of your ships a year ago - you don't want to lose any more now." 

"Brave words," A female voice came back. "But in that old clunker, you must know you don't stand a chance." 

"Last chance to back out." I turned on the targeting computers and a moment later, they all locked on. I didn't want to fire first, but the truth was I had no clue what kind of weapons they might have, and the first shot might be the last.

"We'll let you live if you turn over any cargo and money you have," The voice came back. "There is no need for bloodshed."

"I'm a teacher on Ludus," I said, slowly reaching down and flicking a switch near the bottom of the console. "I have no cargo, and I am not carrying any money with me."

"We are just supposed to believe that?"

"I was hoping so." I reached over and flicked the second switch. The third would finish the sequence, but it would be a costly move. 

"Lets just say we are not the trusting type, Miss Teacher," The voice dripped with sarcasm, and then something - a gut feeling, an instinct or whatever - made me realise that would be the last thing I hear from the three attackers. With a sigh, I reached above my head and flicked the third switch. A ten second count down started, and I smiled.

"Have a nice day," I called out, and then braced myself against the seat as the hyperdrive engines kicked in, and my ship vanished into subspace.

Thirty seconds later, I flashed back into real space and found myself in orbit around Ludus II. I looked at the radar, and there were no other ships on it. Then I looked at my hyperdrive fuel and let out a long sigh - I'd used up more than half of it, and it would be pretty expensive to replace. It looked like I would be going on another quest sooner than I thought,

But first - first I had to get to school before the Headmistress decided I wasn't coming and fired me.

I pushed the nose of The Folly down, and flew down to the surface, landing in the car park outside the school. Along with the no PVP protocols that surrounded Ludus II, there were specific protocols that prevented spaceships from being stolen from the school car parks. 

Still - out of force of habit, I locked the ship up with the usual level of security, then turned and walked into the school.

2x04 

"Good morning, everyone," I watched as two dozen students phased into the classroom as the bell for the start of class went. "Today, we're going to pick up from where we left off last week." I picked up the book from my desk.

"Around a hundred and thirty years ago this past September, the Canadian forces moved to The Somme," I said. "By this point, Rilla had two brothers at the front, along with a number of her childhood friends." I raised the book. "So - who would like to start?" A hand went up at the back of the class, and I gave the young girl sat in the seat a nod. 

"Miss Jones, thank you." She stood up, and raised the book in front of her.

"Chapter Twenty Two - Little Dog Monday Knows...."

SFO-OFS

"....For the first time Mrs. Blythe's spirit failed her a little, and as the days of suspense wore on the doctor began to look gravely at her, and veto this or that special effort in Red Cross work." Tyson Small paused as I raised my hand. "Miss?"

"I just want to stop you a moment, Mr Small," I said. "You can sit down for a moment." He did, then I came out from behind my desk and sat on it.

"I realise that war now is a great deal different than it was a hundred years ago," I said quietly. "The Oasis, the internet, email and text messages have opened up a world of instant communication, so it might be hard to grasp that - only a century ago, which is a relatively small length of time when you think about it - during World War One the families rarely had any idea of what was going on with their loved ones." I stood up again, then started pacing back and forth in front of the class.

"Just try to picture it," I looked round at the class. "Your friends, your family are fighting on the other side of the world, and all you get is the odd letter and what you read in the paper." I turned back to the board and waved my hand. A series of pictures came up - photographs taken a hundred years before of the battlefields in France.

"Pictures like this appeared in the newspapers of the time. Newspapers that came out before those waiting back home would have received the letters from the trenches, or before the casualty reports were published," I paused to let message sink in.

"If it is okay with all of you, I would like to read the end of the chapter myself." I said. There was a wave of nods, and I picked up the book and looked down at it.

"Oh, let me work—let me work, Gilbert......" I began to read. I continued to narrate the chapter, up until the final paragraph, at which point I paused, then lowered the book. I wasn't finished, but I knew the final few lines by heart and they never failed to get to me. Taking a deep breath, I sat back on my desk and then continued.

"....had been killed in action at Courcelette she crumpled up in a pitiful little heap of merciful unconsciousness in his arms. Nor did she waken to her pain for many hours." Reflexively I blinked back tears in my eyes, even though Oasis had no ability to produce them, then I let out a long slow breath.

"For your homework, a two thousand word story from the perspective of one of the PEI residents when they learn the Canadians were moved to The Somme. You can pick any resident - except those who are away at war - even Whiskers, if you want," I looked around, then smiled. "This is for next week rather than the next lesson." I glanced at my watch, then up at the clock on the wall.

"We've finished a little early, but I think this is a good place to stop. Class dismissed." As the class filed out, the girl who had started the chapter came up to me.

"Miss Gray?" Sophie Jones asked.

"Yes, Miss Jones?"

"Is he really dead? It's not a misunderstanding or a trick?" 

"Based on what we've read already, do you think Lucy Maud Montgomery was the type to do that sort of thing?" She looked at me thoughtfully, then shook her head.

"Wow." She said softly "Poor Rilla."

"It's the reality of war in the real world." I replied equally quietly. "Now - go on, I think young Master Thames is waiting for you." I saw her blush, then she turned and skipped out of the classroom.

Turning back, I picked up the copy of the book and put it back in to my inventory. I know that digital copies of books are all the same, but this specific one - a faithful reproduction of a first edition of the book - had been a present from an ex-boyfriend, and it was one of my most treasured possessions. 

Then the bell rang, and I realised I had five minutes before the next class.

2x05

The no PVP zone that surrounded first Ludus then Ludus II served a number of purposes, and unarguably made The Oasis school planet a much better place for everyone. It meant that students could learn in peace, without fear of being bullied, hurt or abused. It means that teachers were not capable of hurting or abusing the children in their care. 

And it meant that the school shootings that plagued the latter half of the 20th century - in America especially - were a thing of the past. If a student, or a teacher, got pissed off one day, they could not come to school and take out their frustrations, their anger or whatever else was bothering them on other teachers and students.

Of course - the battle at The Tomb showed the downside of the no PVP zone. Perhaps if The Sixer troops at The Tomb had been killed during the initial bombardment, things might have turned out differently. But then again - if Ludus hadn't been protected, it is entirely possible that the war that was confined to The Tomb might have expanded out through the whole planet, and chaos would have ensued.

However the fact that students couldn't come into school and attack their teachers or fellow students didn't mean that they never got pissed off. It just meant that - if they wanted their vengeance - they had to wait until the students or teachers were off planet.

It was this - more than anything else - that lead to most students, and every teacher I know of, using an alias at school. To hide who they were, and to ensure that whatever happened in school stayed in school.

My Headmistress - Sally Sasser - took her name from an old tv show she had liked. Our games teacher just used the name Mrs Morris after a cartoon. And our maths teacher took a different name every year, just because he could. 

For me - I picked Josephine Gray because I always liked the name Josephine, and Gray because it pretty much reflected my personality. Most people will tell you they are a hero - that they are on the side of the angels and that they dream the impossible dream and fight the good fight with all of their might. A smaller number of people will tell you they are bad through and through - that they will lie, cheat, steal and kill because it is fun.

Me? I try to do good as much as I can, but I accepted that - even in The Oasis - we have to live and work in the real world, and that if you don't modify your approach to deal with the situation you are in, then you are going to get killed.

A philosophy that has lead me to occasionally hire out as security for long distance space flights, as a member of a team that raided a compound to recover a stolen spaceship, and - once or twice - as an assassin for hire. 

After all - a girl has to have some fun in her life, doesn't she?

2x06

"So - who can tell me about The Harvard Compact?" I asked, looking around my mid-afternoon Oasis History class. When no one raised a hand, I rolled my eyes. "Oh come on - we talked about this during the anniversary. Surely at least one of you can remember that far back?" 

"Miss Gray?" A girl in the middle of the class raised her hand.

"Miss Burrows."

"Following the destruction of Washington DC in 2017, The US Government - such as it was - was relocated to Arcadia in California. The entire country was in chaos, and the more radical parts of the newly formed government decided that - since it was an American who created The Oasis, and since GSS and The Oasis were based in America - control of The Oasis should now fall under the jurisdiction of Congress, The Senate and The President," Susan Burrows paused.

"Go on."

"A month after the newly reformed government was sworn in, Congress passed a law saying that if The Oasis was going to continue to be a place of business, then it must begin to implement various laws to ensure that any business was conducted fairly an ethically," She paused. "The Senate passed it two days later, and President Bachman signed it into law two days after that."

"And how did that go?" I looked around, then pointed to another student. "Mr Brown?" A boy with brown hair stood up.

"Halliday, Morrow and Underwood fought it as hard as they could, but eventually they had to give in or see GSS and The Oasis shut down," Thomas Brown said "They started to implement the laws about three months after it was signed. They started with the planets in Sector One, and were going to move on to the planets in Sector Two when there was a rebellion, of sorts."

"What kind of rebellion?" I saw a few more hands go up this time. "Miss Walker?"

"All of the other businesses in The Oasis started to refuse to do business with any American owned organisation," Karen Walker said. "In addition, nearly every business in The Oasis started to refuse service and the like to any American avatar." 

"Did it work?"

"Yes, Miss Gray," Karen said with a slight smile. "Within two months, the boycott - the rebellion - had spread to the other 25 Sectors, and every American business in The Oasis was on the verge of going bankrupt. Even IOI was having difficulties."

"So what happened next?" I pointed to another student.

"The businesses that were going under, with the help of Hallidy, Morrow and Underwood, started to lobby the government and convince them to repeal the laws," Billy Davenport said. "It took a month, but the government repealed the law."

"What happened to the businesses that were in trouble?" I asked, and Billy gave a brief smile.

"Once the word got out that they were trying to get the laws reversed, people started conducting business with them again."

"Did that hurt the effort?"

"No," He shook his head "Everyone who did business made it clear that it would only last while they were trying to get the law overturned." 

"Very good." I smiled, then glanced up at the clock. "Okay - for homework, I want you to write a five page summary on what lessons were learned from this, why it was called The Harvard Compact, and if there have ever been any other attempts to enforce universal law and order on The Oasis." There were a few groans. 

"I know that tonight is the first night of the final four, so the homework is for next week," I smiled at the expressions on the faces of my class. The final four was the name given to the semi-finals and final of the World Cricket Championships, held every year from August to November. While it wasn't one of the most popular spectator events in The Oasis, it was a HUGE thing in The Scottish Isles and the S4 schools, and I could fully understand why my students didn't want to miss it. I didn't want to miss it either!

"Anyone who fails to turn it in will come to regret it." I added with a slight smile, then the bell rang and I watched the students file out.

"Don't forget our fencing class this evening, Miss." Susan said on her way past my desk.

"Of course not," I replied. She left the classroom, and I sat back down behind my desk, flicking through the notes I had made for the next class - a fifth year class on one of the most beloved classics of the past forty years. One that covered government corruption, equal rights, peer pressure and the pro-choice/anti-choice arguments. Stephanie Meyer's "Breaking Dawn" had, to some degree, changed the world over the last three decades, and it was now one of the staples of nearly every literature course throughout The Oasis. Plus it had vampires, and vampires are always cool.

2x07

By far and way one of the strangest phenomena that grew up in The Oasis were "virtual" video games.

Video games had existed for decades before The Oasis - from the first basic consoles such as the 2600 through to (what were at the time) the state of the art consoles that were produced at the start of the 21st century. 

And - as has been frequently documented - The Oasis started out as the next generation in video games. A fully interactive, virtual reality with sight, sound and touch (and - if you had enough money - smell.) In fact - when The Oasis was built, James Halliday included a number of "classic" video games that could be played on virtual consoles.

However, as The Oasis became more of a "serious" virtual reality (as opposed to one used just for gaming), players - users - became more and more attached to their avatars, and a large number of them became unwilling to risk them in what they considered trivial pursuits. 

Which meant that there was a sudden decrease in interest in games like Blood Bowl, Battlecars and the other RPGs that had been simulated within The Oasis. RPGs that were a lot of fun, but that were very dangerous and - more often than not - resulted in the death of a number of avatars.

For the first few years, this situation was just accepted as a phase. That games, like clothes, movies, music and books, fell in and out of fashion and this was one of the "down cycles" (for want of a better phrase.) 

The breakthrough came when the first release of Battlecars-VR was introduced on a planet called TGW in Sector 20. The gameplay was the same as the original Battlecars board game, and - to some extent - the same as the Battlecars RPG that had been introduced to The Oasis some eight years before. However the main difference was that - instead of your avatar being in the car, it was a projection of the avatar. This meant that if your car exploded (which was not unheard of, since that was the object of the game) then your were just out of the game, rather than being dead.

A small number of purists objected to this - they continued to insist that the fun of the original game was that you were risking your life and that it was a winner takes all situation, and that the new version meant you didn't have to be as committed to surviving as you did in the "classic" game.

Everyone else, however, thought the purists were being stupid, and flocked to the game in numbers that hadn't been seen since the early days. 

The success of Battlecars-VR spawned a whole host of other "vr" games within The Oasis - many were replications of RPG video games like BulletWitch and Blue Dragon, while others replicated board games - Blood Bowl and McGonagall BattleChess to name a few.

In the years since they had been introduced, they had become a huge spectator sport. In fact, I would go so far as to say they were more popular than most "traditional" sports - Oasis versions of football, American football, baseball, cricket and hockey were not as popular as their real world counterparts (most of which had stopped being played after the energy crisis hit) and had slowly been replaced by more "arcade like" versions of the sports. Plus the fact The Oasis allowed more..... interesting versions of the traditional sports (Zero-G for example) also contributed to the fading popularity of the originals.

Plus they were a lot of fun to play. 

2x08

"You are wonderful."

"Thank you - I have worked hard to become so."

"I admit it, you are better than I am."

"Then why are you smiling?" 

"Because I know something you don't know."

"And what is that?"

"I..... am not left-handed," The student I was fencing with suddenly switched her foil to her right hand, and started swinging at me again. I realised that she - Susan Burrows - was actually far better at fencing than I was. She was pushing me further and further back, and I realised I was within a few inches of falling out of the ring.

"You are amazing," I continued the quote she'd started, even though she knew I was left handed and knew if I switched, I would get creamed.

"I ought to be, after twenty years," She smiled, knowing she had me.

"Oh - there's something I ought to tell you," I replied, trying to dodge past her. She read my intention and took one step back, then dodged to the side as well, blocking my feint and twisting my sword back towards me. I reluctantly backed up, desperately waving the foil to block the myriad of strokes she was sending my way.

"Tell me," She continued to flick her sword side to side, driving me backwards towards the edge of the ring. The warning bell pinged as my foot touched the line and I knew if I didn't do something impressive, I would be out in a heartbeat.

"I'm not left handed either," I threw my sword up in the air, jumped sideways, then - as I reached out with my right hand to grab the sword on its way down - I realised I had thrown it slightly too far. I threw myself over to try to reach it and tripped over my own feet. A second later, I landed on the floor outside the ring.

Susan took a step back, then gave a polite bow. 

"Very graceful Miss," She said with a slight smile.

"Thank you," I pushed myself up and then got to my feet. "Where did you learn to fight left-handed?"

"After my last match - the one against OPS #666 - I realised that I needed to learn some new skills," She blushed, and I remembered just how badly she had been beaten in the first round of the intra-school tournament. 

"I would say you've managed that," I picked my sword up from where I had dropped it. 

"Best of three?" She asked, walking back to the centre of the circle. I looked around at the rest of the practice group, then looked over at the targets.

"How good are you with your left hand, Miss Burrows?" She followed my gaze, then sighed.

"You'll shoot with your right, Miss?" She asked. I nodded. "Okay - first to twenty?"

"Make it twenty five," I said with a smile. "The usual three, two, one arrangement."

"Yes, Miss" We walked over to the shooting range, then each picked up a pistol. I realised that we'd attracted some attention, but I decided just to focus on the task at hand.

"On the bell," I said quietly, then - when I saw her nod - I pressed the start button, and raised the gun. A few seconds later, there were three beeps, then the sound of a bell, and we both opened fire.

SFO-OFS

I was lying, of course. Not about being left handed - I am naturally a leftie - but about not being able to use my right hand. 

After years of questing, sometimes with my father, sometimes on my own, I had - by necessity - learned to not only shoot with my right hand but to sword fight as well. It is a skill that comes in useful when you are duelling with a master swordsman and your left arm gets shot by one of his evil minions - something that happens more often than you might think.

However in my many years of experience, I had also learned that if you repeatedly beat the students you are trying to teach, then they tend to get disenchanted and quit the class. 

Plus I get to feel like a superhero with a duel identity, which has to be every little girl's dream.

SFO-OFS

The second bell sounded and the guns we were using cut off. I smiled at Susan as the targets came flying towards us then stopped, hovering around a foot away.

"Very impressive," I nodded towards Susan's target. In the minute we had had to shoot, she had scored seventy five hits, with fifty four in the inner ring and ten of those in the bullseye.

"Thank you," She smiled bashfully. "I've been practising on a virtual range at home."

"So you've been cheating?" I gave her an amused grin.

"I wouldn't call it cheating," She replied. "Somebody might hear." We shared a laugh, then she looked over at my target.

"Not so bad yourself, Miss." I looked at mine to see I had hit seventy, with sixty in the inner ring and five bullseyes.

"Thank you," I nodded. "But I may have been practising as well."

"So you've been cheating?" She asked in the same tone I had.

"Teachers don't cheat," I replied. "They learn a new skill." Susan laughed, then she looked back at the target again.

"Best out of three, Miss?" 

"I wish I could, Miss Burrows, but I have an appointment this evening that I don't want to miss." I looked at my watch. "In fact, I really should be going."

"Hot date?" Susan asked with a cheeky smile. I rolled my eyes, then turned to address the rest of the group.

"I'm sorry - I have to leave now. You can all continue for as long as you want, but I'm going to have to turn the no PVP protocols back on, so you will have to restrict yourself to shooting and fencing with automatons." There were a few grumbles, but all the students nodded. "I will see you all tomorrow." 

2x09

Having a virtual school definitely had some advantages. Aside from the fact students could hurt each other, it was impossible for anyone to steal equipment, books or anything else from the school. Everything that belonged in the school only existed in the school - it couldn't be taken out of it. If anyone tried, then the thing they stole would vanish and reappear in the school's inventory as soon as they crossed the boundary line. And - just to add insult to injury - it noted the attempted theft on the student's school record.

So - as I walked towards the car park - I wasn't worried about leaving a bunch of students with guns and swords, and after the pirate attack on the way to school I wanted to leave extra time to get home so that I wouldn't be late.

I reached Raxxla's Folly and whispered the password ("crunch the nutty nutty") then opened the hatch and climbed inside. Putting my bag down, I walked into the cockpit, started the ship up and took off. 

As I flew into the upper atmosphere, my mind drifted back to the first time I had flown the ship.

I had lost The Erudite Emerald at The Battle of Chthonia. But when The Resurrection took place, I got it back again, and while I had to ask my Dad to give me a lift back to Chthonia to pick it up, I was happy to get my ship back.

However in the following three months, I was attacked by eight former Sixers. The Sixer High Command had had records of the majority of successful gunters - aside from The High Five, they kept records of several hundred others - and, once they returned to life, they tried to attack them. But they also had a list of ships that had gone to Chthonia for the assault on Castle Halliday - making the assumption that anyone who had gone to Chthonia was probably not on their side (which was fair enough - I can't think of anyone who would have fought with The Sixers.)

Which meant that even though I wasn't a gunter, I was apparently fair game to the newly reborn Sixer army. They didn't know who I was specifically, but they had the description and name of my ship. 

Of the three attacks, the first two I took care of fairly easily, and the third came while my father and I were flying through to Sector 22. It was that that convinced me I needed to change ships, because while my Dad and I managed to destroy The Sixer that attacked us, my Dad's ship was nearly crippled and I lost most of my ablative armour and my rear laser canon.

A week later, I flew to a planet named Zaonce in Sector 3. It was where I had bought The Emerald from originally, and I knew they had a whole fleet of ships there that would be suitable. After an hour, I found Raxxla's Folly and - with some of my savings and a part exchange for The Emerald - I had it upgraded. 

I also ensured that the dealer would either re-register The Emerald under a different name, or melt it down for scrap. Since it was the ship that The Sixers were after, and not me personally, I didn't want the next owner to get blown out of the sky without knowing why it was happening.

I flew The Folly back home, and took it to school the next day. And since then, I have only been attacked five times and each and every time I have been victorious. This morning was the sixth, and I class that as a tie, since everyone got out alive.

My mind came back to the present as I saw Avonlea looming in my cockpit window. 

"Home sweet home" I smiled, then pushed the nose down and headed towards the surface.

2x0A

"Happy birthday, sweetheart," My Dad said as I walked into the landing bay. 

"Thank you, Dad," I walked over and pulled him into a hug. "And thank you for the book - I have been waiting to read it for ages."

"You're welcome, my dear," Dad replied. "I thought'd you like it."

"It's wonderful," I paused, biting my lip nervously. "Could we talk about something?"

"Sure, sweetheart," He nodded. "Do you want to go somewhere?" I glanced over at the arcade just outside the landing bay, and smiled.

"How about Narnia?" I asked.

SFO-OFS

One of the surprising effects of the energy crisis, and the subsequent collapse of civilisation throughout most of the world, was a huge uptake of organised religion. It seemed that - now that science was failing humanity - a vast number of them were returning to the church (or the synagogue or the mosque or another temple of their choice) as an answer to the problems of the world.

This resurgence in religious belief also lead to some books growing in popularity - His Dark Materials, Dante's Inferno and The Circle of Three Series all started to move up the best seller list again in a way not seen since the end of the twentieth century and before. 

But the series that benefited most from this new interest in the world of religion - well, Christian religion at least - was The Chronicles Of Narnia, written by CS Lewis.

Scholars (such as myself) have long pondered why a series of what are ostensibly children's books should have captured that imagination of so many - billions of people around the world had now read and re-read them - but everyone seemed to have a different point of view.

For me, I think it was that - more than any other "religious" books - they were suited to adaptations as Oasis Quests. Children (and adults) could quiet literally insert themselves into the books and play along with their favourite characters.

Other stories had tried it, but the ones that had succeeded were generally action/adventure books - The Twilight Series, The Oracle Trilogy, The Fearless series - or (for want of a better phrase) romance/sappy books - Green Gables, Gone With The Wind and The Hunger Games were primary examples of the genre.

But for whatever reason, The Chronicles seemed to hit the right tone with everyone, and they were some of the most popular quests in the whole of The Oasis. So much so that there were nearly fifty planets dedicated to them, dotted around the 27 sectors.

SFO-OFS

My favourite simulation from Narnia was The Battle of The Ford of Beruna - the climax of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. However, while it was always a lot of fun, and gave me a chance to practice a lot of different skills - ranging from swordfighting to archery - it was not exactly suited to private talks with your father. 

So instead, my father and I joined the quest for Prince Rillian. We entered the story in Castle Harfang, just after the children arrived. For the first ten minutes or so, we played through the story - I was playing the part of Jill, and Dad the part of Puddleglum. 

(I had a theory that Eustace and Jill ended up being married, or at least lovers, and while my father didn't entirely agree, he understood why playing Eustace to my Jill was just not something I could accept.)

After Eustace had gone to bed, Puddleglum came into my room and sat on my massive bed, hands folded in his lap.

"So what did you want to talk about, sweetheart?" He asked. I bit my lip - while we had a very close relationship, and usually discussed most things (including my boyfriends, my sex life - such as it was - and so forth) the topic of my mother was one that was almost entirely off limit.

"It's about mother, Dad," I said after a moment. Almost at once, I regretted it, as his expression closed down just a little - as if he had erected a wall between us, to protect himself from whatever was coming next.

"What about her, dear?" He asked quietly.

"I was just wondering if you knew anything more about her than what you've told me," I said quickly. "I mean - I don't think you're keeping secrets or deliberately hiding things, but there may be something you know that you thought I couldn't cope with or something like that." He gazed at me for a few minutes, then tilted his head to one side.

"What makes you ask?" 

"A few months ago - the night before the first anniversary of of Chthonia, I got a message," I leaned back against the bed head. "I found it in my pigeon hole at work." 

"And it relates to your mother?" He looked at me in bewilderment.

"There was a silver key, and a note," I nodded. "The note read 'Dear Kim, Your mother left this in my keeping, to be given to you at the right time. That time is now. From, A friend.'" I paused, watching for some reaction from him. I might as well have been watching the wall behind him.

"No one at school knows my real name," I pressed on. "So it wasn't anyone there."

"What about one of your friends?" He asked.

"I asked them - they all say it wasn't them, and I can't see why it would be." I shrugged. "Can you think of anyone who might have sent it?" He started at the bedspread for a long while, then looked up and shook his head.

"Sorry, sweetheart," He said regretfully. "I can't think of anyone who might know your real name who might also have known your mother."

"How many know my real name?" I asked hopefully.

"Three or four, maybe six at a push," He admitted. "Do you want me to talk to them?" 

"Could I?" I suggested. "Maybe they will talk to me about it, if I ask them?" 

"I can put you in touch with them," He agreed. "But I am pretty sure none of them would have done this either - as far as I know, none of them knows your mother." I sighed.

"I don't suppose you know what they key might be?"

"Doesn't ring a bell," He admitted. "But to be honest, I knew very little about your mother. We got drunk a party, and then ten months later I was contacted by a lawyer who told me that your mother had died, and that you were my daughter."

"You never thought about not taking care of me?" I smiled as he shook his head emphatically.

"Never even considered it." He leaned over and hugged me, then kissed me on the top of my head. "So - are you ready to continue the quest? Think we can escape?"

"The mighty Maxwells? Not a problem!" We both laughed, then - with another hug and forehead kiss - he left the bedroom. I lay back down on the bed, and closed my eyes.

2x0D

The rest of the simulation played out as always - we escaped then got lost in the underland, which was where we decided to finish for the night. (I love The Silver Chair as a book, but some parts of it are not that fun to play through.)

We returned to the landing bay and - with a final hug - went our separate ways. Dad "lived" on a planet on the far side of Sector One, but had invested in a ship with powerful engines. He could - if he pushed it - cross the sector in about the same time it took me to get to school in the morning. 

Watching his ship fly out of the bay, I walked over, climbed into The Folly and took off. Flying out of the bay, I pushed the nose up and flew into the atmosphere of Staples 101 - the planet we had been on - and back towards Avonlea.

The flight home was relatively quiet - I had to avoid a comet that unexpectedly crossed my path, and there was also a meteor shower that disrupted my path a little - and I arrived back on Avonlea about ninety minutes after my father and I had parted.

Landing, I walked up to my house and climbed the stairs up to my room. I glanced at the clock - it was still early in Oasis Time but it was now nearly 9pm back in The Scottish Isles - then I looked over at the package that had been left on my front doorstep earlier that day.

I knew I should be going - it may have only taken me five minutes to walk to and from school, but a lot could happen in five minutes, especially at night - but no one had ever sent me a package before, and I realised I just had to know what it was.

I picked it up and put it on my desk, then pulled out the letter opener from the drawer and slit the wrapping paper. I pulled it off and set it to one side, then turned back to look at the package and found myself staring at it in total and complete awe.

It was a painting. An actual painting - real paint on a real canvas. Which, I know, doesn't sound that awe inspiring, but in an entirely digital world like The Oasis, it was very rare to see real, actually painted paintings. Most were digitised copies of paintings from the real world, or paintings created by computer programs here in The Oasis. And while I knew the canvas and the paint were all digital, the act of putting the paint on to the canvas had been very real.

The painting was of a starscape over a mountain. I didn't know which mountain, but - based on the fact the mountains were green and there was s spaceship in the near foreground - I guessed it was in The Oasis, rather than the real world.

I looked back at the clump of paper on the floor, but even after searching for ten minutes, couldn't find a note, or a hint of who might have sent me the painting. Nor was there any suggestion of what the picture was of.

"Another mystery," I said to myself, then glanced at my watch. "Time to be going." 

With a final glance of the painting, I sat down at my desk and triggered the command to log out.

As the screen faded, I took of my visor and found myself staring into the darkness of my classroom in George Formy Secondary School. And, as always, I felt the faint tinge of sadness that I had to live in this world - that The Oasis could not support human life all the time.

With a sigh, I stood up and headed home.


	4. La Tua Cantante

(31st of December, 2046)

3x00

"No longer just a nightmare, the line of black advanced on us through the icy mist stirred up by their feet. We’re going to die, I thought in panic. 

I was desperate for the precious one I guarded, but even to think of that was a lapse in attention I could not afford. They ghosted closer, their dark robes billowing slightly with the movement. 

I saw their hands curl into bone coloured claws. They drifted apart, angling to come at us from all sides. 

We were outnumbered. It was over."

The words were as familiar to me as my own name - even discounting all the times I had read them in class, I had heard them every year, on this date, for the last eleven years. Five years ago - on the thirty fifth anniversary of one of the most famous confrontations in literary history - I had been given the unbelievable honour of saying them myself, and that was always a feeling I would remember.

A feeling that Miss Burrows would now no doubt be feeling as well. Pride, excitement, anticipation - everything you would feel when you are about to face the battle of your life.

The advancing line came to a halt, and spread out across the width of the field. My eyes scanned their line, searching for where the key players were located, then I looked back as Bruce Carter, in his role as Carlisle Cullen, took three steps forward then stopped.

It was time.

3x01

The Twilight Saga, by Stephenie Meyer, is one of the most beloved series of books in recent history. While they had been greeted with some derision when initially released, the four books had undeniably stood the test of time and become a staple of literature courses around the world. 

The themes they explored - the role of women in a male dominated world, free will, socialism versus conservatism, pro-life vs pro-choice and, most especially, government corruption, overreach and abuse of power - became more and more relevant as it became apparent the world was falling into chaos and the governments of the world were becoming more and more right wing in an attempt to keep their countries from collapsing into anarchy.

And the idea that a small group of people dedicated to a single cause could stand up and prevail against overwhelming odds was one that definitely appealed to a race faced with the possibility of its own extinction.

Plus the whole love story aspect was another major factor. "La tua cantante" became one of the most popular phrases as weddings - even now, it still is - and while Renesmee did not become all that popular a name for children (because while we all fell in love with the series, we are not insane), the names Edward, Bella, Jacob, Alice and Vanessa all shot to the top of the charts and have pretty much stayed there ever since.

Of course the series did have its detractors - The Imprinting trials of 2019 caused a number of people to ask for it to be banned or shunned, and there are always some people who just oppose things for the sake of opposing them.

But aside from those minor problems, The Saga has remained one of the most respected and, as I said, beloved series since it was published. 

So much so that The Second Battle of Forks - the confrontation between The Cullens and The Volturi on New Years Eve - had joined the pantheon of battles that were routinely re-enacted across The Oasis. Other battles included the conclusion to the Trojan War, The Battle of Beruna, The Battle of Wolf 359, The Battle of Sector 300, The Liberation of Proxima Three and The Battle of Satan's Diving Board. 

These activities caused some descent amongst the "purists" - those who feel that the four books, and only the four books, should be considered canon, and everything else should be ignored.

To them - The Second Battle of Forks never took place, because the confrontation was resolved peacefully after the return of Alice and Jasper.

However the finale of the film (the original film, staring former President Stewart, and not the god-awful remake from 2031) was - most people thought - far more satisfying and became so popular that - on the film's tenth anniversary - a special edition of Breaking Dawn was published that had a "cut scene" included at the end. It was The Battle as told by Bella, via the medium of Alice (which sounds confusing, but it the way it was written was entirely understandable). The entire printing run of the book sold out in thirty six hours, and it has almost became the defacto version of Breaking Dawn.

Eleven years ago - while I was still teaching at GF Secondary School - I got invited by one of my former students to come along to a version of The Battle they held every year. Even though GFS was still a "real school" almost all of the students had Oasis accounts, and an alumni organisation (of sorts) had sprung up inside The Oasis.

At first, they merely staged The Battle between members of the group (The Banjateers), but then a a few students from a local OPS had wandered into the battleground while the fight was taking place, and decided that they wanted to be a part of it.

An agreement was quickly drawn out, and the year after - four years before I knew anything about it - The Banjateers (representing The Cullens) and OPS #2001 (The Volturi) met on the field of combat and had a hugely impressive battle. Not a real battle - while there was somewhat of a rivalry, no one actually wanted to kill each other - but a fully simulated re-enactment of The Second Battle, with powers and everything. Both groups have a recording of The Battle, which you can see if you visit their websites.

When I first joined in this tradition - four years after it started - I was amazed at how detailed the recreation was - even down to avatars being held in place by Jane's power, or blinded by Zafrina's. I was no slouch in the fighting department, even back then, but playing as Maggie, I got my ass handed to me within five minutes, and spent the rest of The Battle watching from the side lines.

Now - eleven years later - I was far more used to how it worked, who had powers and who just relied on skill.

And given that this was the fifteenth anniversary of the first proper fight, not to mention the fortieth anniversary of the original confrontation, there was no way - NO WAY - I was going to let my team lose.

3x02

This year, The Banjateers were representing The Cullen Clan. The winner of each year got to decide which clan they wanted to be the year after, and last year (as The Cullens) we had been trounced so completely that OPS #2001 wanted to see if they could do it two years in a row as The Volturi (something that had yet to be achieved). I was playing the part of Rosalie, stood side by side with Andrew Garrison - playing Emmett.

I watched as he, Bella, Jacob and Renesmee walked slowly to the other side of the field, to talk to Aro - a woman named Michelle Duvall, who was one of my best friends. We had met through this - the year I was playing Bella, she was playing Jane - and after I had ripped her head off and thrown her to the wolves (literally) we had become friends. 

The year after she had returned the favour, and thrown me into the massive chasm that opened up across the field. And although I fell a fair distance, I have to admit I was smiling all the way down. Partly because it was a lot of fun, and partly because Sam had charged up behind her, knocking her into the gaping split in the earth as well.

The rules of The Battle said that any time after Caius confronted Irina, the battle proper could begin. Irina was played by someone from their school - usually someone who wanted to watch the battle, but not take part in it (last year it had been their Head Teacher), but twice in the past fifteen years, she had actually turned against her family and launched the attack early. And one year - sadly when The Banjateers were playing The Volturi - OPS #2001 got to her and she actually took out Caius and Demetri before we realised what had happened.

So while most of us watched the talk between Aro and Renesmee unfold, two of our ranks were assigned to keep an eye on Irina.

The time seemed to slow to a crawl, then we saw Jacob and Renesmee start to walk back towards us, flanked on either side by Emmett and Bella. Edward was a few paces behind them.

In a few moments, Irina would be brought forward and asked about her complaint. Caius would ask her "This is the child you saw? The one that was obviously more than human?" and then - when Irina replied "I'm not sure" - then the battle could begin. 

Either side could attack first, but sometimes taking the initiative and using the element of surprise meant that you gave learning a part of their strategy.

The only other rule of The Battle was that the person playing Renesmee - in this instance, a young girl named Astrid Fox - had to be taken out of the battle. She was not permitted to fight, because the entire purpose of The Battle was to protect her life. A sub-part of this rule was that - if The Volturi could kill her and her escort - they won by default. In the fifteen years that the two schools had been fighting, this had never happened.

"This is the child you saw?"

I crouched, tensing for the fight.

"The one that was obviously more than human?"

Looking around, I saw everyone else ready to spring. On the far side of the clearing, I saw The Volturi Guard take a fighting stance as well. 

Irina paused, hesitating, then she dipped her head.

"I'm.... I'm not sure" Almost before she had finished speaking, the young man playing Jacob - Keith Garret - span around and - in less than two bounds - pounced onto Aro, biting at his neck.

"SETH - RENESMEE. NOW!" In another second, Renesmee had scampered over to Seth, who carried her away from our lines as fast as he could run.

"BELLA - HIT IT!" Edward's final instruction had Bella - Susan Burrows - bring up her defensive shield, covering us all. Once we felt it surround us, we all started running across the field. Benjamin - Leo Green - started pelting the opposite lines with a series of giant snowballs, providing us some level of cover.

With a quick flashback to The Battle of Chthonia - and a thought of how similar these two situation were - I ploughed into The Volturi lines, and started fighting.

3x03

"I can not believe you did that!" Michelle and I were sat on the sidelines, watching the end of The Battle. For the first time in nearly a decade, Aro had been the first to die in the battle, and she was not happy about it.

I had held out a little longer, but as I was attempting to take down Alex (along with Andrew), Jane and Demetri had double-teamed Bella and Edward, and distracted her long enough for her shield to fail for a few seconds.

More than enough for Alex to blind Emmett and me and kill us less than a second later.

However, it appeared that our sacrifice had not been in vain. The loss of Aro before the fight had even started had utterly demoralised most of The Guard, and in the thirty seconds it took for them to recover their composure, Caius, Marcus and Renata had all been taken care of as well.

To give them their credit, The Volturi had rallied and were now putting up a good fight, but even Michelle had to admit that the result was pretty much a foregone conclusion - the initial losses had taken their toll and the numbers were now most definitely on our side.

"Did what?" I asked innocently, trying not to smirk.

"Jacob takes Renesmee away from the battle - everyone knows that!" She frowned at me, although I detected a hint of a smile playing around her lips.

"And yet no one - not your game-masters or ours - ever thought to write that into the rules," I pointed out. "Just because we have more imagination than you and decided to trust one of the other wolves doesn't make us the bad guys." Michelle rolled her eyes.

"I think our games-master is going to make an appeal to clarify it next year," She looked over to where Caius and Marcus were sat on the side-lines as well - both talking intently.

"It might not matter any more," I said with a smile. "We figured we could get away with this once because no one would be expecting it," I paused. "Next year it wouldn't be so much of a surprise, so it might not work as well."

"True," Michelle admitted. We both watched the battle for a bit - the wolves were rampaging through The Volturi ranks with gay abandon, ripping and tearing as they went. "How was your birthday? I'm sorry I missed it, but I was on a quest in Sector 26."

"What was it for?" I asked, not taking my eyes off the field as Jacob launched himself into one of the wives.

"Classified." She smirked at me - that was our general response to almost any quesiton about a quest that lead to an artifact. My curiousity was piqued for a few moments, but I realised I had enough on my plate already without adding anything else.

"My birthday was fun," I replied to her original question. "And - on that topic - I've been asking everyone, and maybe you can help." I opened a window in front of us and brought up an image of the picture I had been given. The picture itself was now hanging above my fireplace, behind a level three forcefield, but I had taken a number of screencaps of it from almost every angle.

"Someone delivered this to my doorstep, but I have no idea who it was. I've asked around at school, and my father and friends, but no one has a clue what this is." 

"It's the view from Professor Dumbledore's office window," Michelle replied, then - in a tone of total disbelief - asked, "Don't tell me you've never taken the tour of the most renowned version of Hogwarts in the twenty seven sectors?" I stared at her blankly for a few seconds, then she blushed.

"Oh - yeah. Sorry - I forgot about that," She paused. "I still can't believe there is such a taboo about it - even after all this time."

"How many Americans fly The Stars and Strips any more? Or watch The Power Rangers?" She tilted her head in acknowledgement, so I continued, "I know it was nearly thirty years ago, 'Chelle, but The Four House Massacre was as devastating to us as the Independence Day Bombing was to America."

"I know," She said quietly. 

"So what can you tell me about.... this?" I waved my hand at the painting, already less enthused about it now I knew what it was a picture of.

"The castle is located on the planet....." She stopped as there was a huge cheer from behind us. We both looked round at the field, and I jumped to my feet, cheering and applauding as we watched Jacob, Sam and Leah surround Jane - the last member of The Volturi left.

"You're witch queen is down!" Jane snapped. "You attack me, and you know what I can do."

"You can only take one of us," A voice came from behind the wolves, and Edward walked with a calm, easy stride to stand between Jacob and Leah. "And the other three will rip you apart before you can say 'oh god, please stop hitting me with my own rib bones!'" Edward tilted his head to one side, then gave her a dark smile. "So what's it to be, Jane - do you yield?" Everyone watched in silence as Jane started back at him for a moment. Then exclamations of surprise filled the air as Edward collapsed on the ground, writhing slightly.

In a flash, the three wolves all leaped at the same time, knocking Jane to the ground. They each started ripping and tearing, then they all backed off - Jacob and Sam each had an arm in their mouth, while Leah had Jane's head in her jaws.

Edward slowly got to his feet, then - with a quick look around - picked up the metal stick Caius had been carrying before his untimely demise.

"Renesmee? Would you like to do the honours?" Edward called out, then Seth - Renesmee on his back - trotted out of the forest before coming to a halt next to him. Edward handed her the stick and - with a look of triumph that seemed oddly out of place on the face of a child - Renesmee Carlie Cullen triggered the device and Jane's body was engulfed in fire.

As the flames danced around the body, The Cullen Clan - myself included - ran back onto the field, racing over to where Edward, his daughter and the four wolves were stood. The Volturi - including the young man playing Jane - followed us at a slightly slower pace.

When we were all assembled on the field, Edward, Bella and Renesmee all walked up to Aro, Caius and Marcus.

"Congratulations," Michelle said with a polite bow. "That was a truly impressive plan, and I have to admit - you caught us entirely off guard."

"Thank you," Susan replied with a curtsey. "I take it the game-masters will be in discussion about a rule change?"

"Maybe, maybe not," Michelle laughed. "But either way - you win this day, and so this belongs to you." Jane and Alex walked forward, then together they held out the trophy that went along with the victory. Edward and Renesmee both looked at Bella, who took a step forward.

"On behalf of The Banjateers, and 599, thank you." She said in a polite voice, then took the trophy and - to a massive burst of cheering and applause - held it up, a massive grin of joy on her face.

3x04

The party on the battlefield went on for a fair while - although we had won and they had lost, the party was for everyone and we all enjoyed it - then, when it started to break up, Michelle and I started walking back across the field towards where we'd left our spaceships.

"You were telling me about Hogwarts?" I asked, and even I was able to hear the slight tone of disgust in my voice. Michelle rolled her eyes.

"If you're going on a quest that relates to the Potterverse, you are possibly going to have to learn something about it, Blue."

"I know, I know." I said, slightly annoyed. "But..... well you know how deeply engrained the dislike is." Michelle smiled, then took pity on me.

"The castle is on Gallifrey, in the area of Sector 26 known as the BritCon Cluster," She paused, then smiled. "The Cluster is also home to the planets Arda, Arg, Herom and Traken, but the most famous creation of the school is on the northern continent of Gallifrey." She saw the sceptical look on my face, and laughed. "The entire cluster was built by an American consortium about twenty years ago or so - no British companies had anything to do with it."

"That makes more sense," I smirked - simulations of Middle Earth, The Adventure Game, Blake's Seven and Dr Who were entirely believable, but the idea that any British company or group would have recreated Hogwarts, especially on a planet with such a hallowed name as Gallifrey, was beyond believable.

"It's an open planet, and a pvp zone, but a mostly peaceful one." We stopped as she reached her ship. "If you want any help with this, don't hesitate to ask."

"I'll see what I can do, but I may take you up on that offer" I took a step back as she climbed in to her ship. "See you on V-Day?"

"Count on it." I took a few more steps back as her ship - one I thought I recognised as a Whitestar - lifted off, then shot off into the sky.

As the vapour trails disappointed behind it, I turned and headed for The Folly.

3x05

As I took off, I thought about what Michelle had told me, and decided to fly straight to The BritCon Cluster. The Second Battle of Forks was held on Forks III - a smallish planet in Sector 23 - so I didn't have all that far to fly, and as 599 was on holiday, I had the rest of the day to myself.

I entered the coordinates into the autopilot, then I turned to the library computer and stared at it for a few minutes.

Like most people born in the 21st century, I knew who Harry Potter was. 

And like most people in The Scottish Isles who had seen The Four Houses Massacre, I wanted nothing to do with him. Him or any part of his world.

SFO-OFS

The Harry Potter books were published between 1997 and 2007 to massive acclaim around the world. They told the story of a boy wizard who went to the magical school of Hogwarts, had many an adventure and eventually defeated the magical world's equivalent of Nolan Sorrento (not that anyone had heard of Nolan Sorrento back then, of course).

From a purely unbiased point of view, it cannot be denied that they did a lot for falling literacy rates, for getting kids to use their imagination again and for the British movie industry - the eleven movies that were made from the series were massive hits and took most of the world by storm.

And if all that they had done was inspire a generation of children to read and write, then everything would have been fine. I would have taught the seven books of The Potterverse along side the nine Green Gables Books, The Discworld Series and, of course, The Twilight Saga.

However, the series also inspired its own political movement, which, in turn, lead to the largest terrorist attack in British history. 

In the books, Harry Potter fights against a group who want to bring about a restoration of power for the aristocracy, but want to do it by violent and murderous means. When the government starts lying about this group - The Death Eaters - Harry forms his own political group to fight back against the lies of those in power. This second group - named Dumbledore's Army (after another character in the series) - used first passive, then more active resistance to fight the government which was becoming ever more corrupt and right-wing, eventually being taken over by the Death Eaters and used for their nefarious ends.

Which was a lesson that some of my generation - the ones born since the turn of the century - took to heart a little too much. 

The DA - one of the biggest groups of activists that Britain has ever seen - was formed in response to the Patriotic Austerity Bill of 2014. The government of the day - in response to the first stirrings of the coming energy crisis - passed a series of laws designed to help the country survive the coming storm. And while the government might well have had good intentions, the majority of the laws widened the divide between rich and poor to a degree not seen in nearly a century.

The DA started out with acts of passive resistance - works to rule, short stoppages and strikes. They gained some sympathy, but when they fielded three hundred candidates in the general election of 2016, they won only four seats, and the government was returned with a massively increased majority.

It was at this point The DA moved from passive activism into a more active role. While the strikes and work stoppages continued - culminating in the first general strike for nearly a century - there were wide spread accusations of "hactivism" - defacing government websites to expose "the truth", hacking into private government databases to get facts and figures and repeated breaches of government email servers leading to a torrent of leaked emails, memos and papers.

When none of this had any effect, it seems that some of The DA decided that a bigger show of resistance was required - something that would make people the country, and the world, over understand what the government was doing.

So, on the 1st of September, 2017, four groups of five members - each wearing the colours of one of the four houses - launched a devastating attack on the four centres of government - Parliament, Holyrood, Cathays Park and Stormont Castle - using sarin gas and anthrax vials. All four executives were wiped out, at the cost of over 1200 lives. What made it worse - if such an adjective can be used about a massacre that large - was that, as all four parliaments were televised, the attacks unfolded life in tv, in front of an audience of millions.

The response was swift and dramatic - with almost no working government, The King declared martial law while emergency elections were held. The army, along with the security services, hunted down every remaining member of The DA, and all of those who were not killed during the process were tried for treason and sent to jail for the rest of their lives.

The elections were held three months later, and martial law was stood down as The King returned power to the government and the people. The country started to heal - and part of that healing process was ridding the country of anything related to The Potterverse.

While rationally people knew it was not the fault of the books, The DA was now so universally reviled that no one in Britain wanted anything to do with anything to do with it. Right across the country, books were burned, dvds and blu-rays destroyed. The Potter Exhibition was razed to the ground, as were two other museums dedicated to the series. Websites closed down, CVs of film stars were edited to remove any reference - the entire country was purged of anything even vaguely relating to the topic.

That was 29 years ago, and still the scars of that day run deep in the psyche of our country. And while the rest of the world continues to enjoy the world of Potter, magic and Hogwarts, it is still a massively taboo subject in The Scottish Isles, and I really can't see that every changing

SFO-OFS

The proximity alarm sounded and - looking up - I realised that I had already arrived at Gallifrey. It was surprisingly orange, given the colour of the mountains in the painting, but it seemed harmless enough. I pulled up a summary of the planet - slightly greater than earth gravity, a magical and tech zone and a pvp zone. But - according to the description at the bottom - it was a widely visited tourist area and so was mostly peaceful.

I glanced down at the planet again, then punched in the coordinates for the version of Hogwarts I was looking for. A moment later, the HUD on my viewscreen flashed up a series of green dots, leading down to the planet.

"Well - here we go" I said to myself, then pushed the stick forward.

3x06

Here, I would probably give you a little history lesson about the castle of Hogwarts - how it was built in 981 by the seven most powerful witches and wizards of the time, or that it had existed since before the birth of Christ, occupied for most of that time by a dynasty of pirates who used it as a base to terrorize the North Sea and surrounding waters.

But since I was six years old when books were burned and museums closed, I have never actually read any of the books, nor have I researched the world that the books are set in. The things I know - about The Houses, Dumbledore, Harry and so on - are gleamed from news reports and from hearing other Oasis avatars talking about it.

(The fact I know about The Diadem of Ravenclaw is because my father, Michelle, Cathleen and I once went on a quest to try to recover it. Our plan was to give The Diadem to Michelle, since none of us wanted it - we were just along for the experience and any other treasure we could get along the way.

In the end, we couldn't get more than three levels in before we were chased out with our tails between our legs, so we gave up on ever getting it.)

So the fact that learning more about my mother might depend on my knowledge of a topic I knew nothing about, and really had no desire to learn about, was going to be somewhat of a problem.

My flight computer flashed a warning message - the path I was heading for was taking me into the magic only zone, and my AI gave me a very polite suggestion that I change course and follow the flight path it threw up on the screen. Resisting the urge to roll my eyes, I span The Folly to the left, heading towards what appeared to be a public landing zone.

Five minutes later, I touched down and started the shut sequence. Once it was completed, I went to the cabinet at the back where I kept my weapons, and opened it.

If the castle was entirely enclosed in a magic only zone - which seemed likely, given it was a school of wizardry and witchcraft - then the two blaster pistols I routinely carried would be no help. 

Instead, I pulled out two "slug-throwers" - very old fashioned guns that used gunpowder as their propellent, and worked in any environment. I also strapped a katana to my back and a short sword to my belt. 

After metaphorically (and literally) girding my loins, I strode out of the ship, locked it up and then turned to face the castle.

I stared at it for a few minutes, then shrugged.

"It's smaller than I thought."

3x07

Walking up to the castle, I had to admit it was a fairly impressive sight. The main gates were intricately carved, nestled in a wall that seemed to surround the entire school. As I approached, they opened, allowing me entry.

I continued up the path - I wasn't sure about wandering around the grounds without more knowledge - and came to a halt in front of the main doors.

I stopped to admire them for a moment, then gently pushed one of them open and walked into the entrance hall.

"Welcome to Hogwarts," A voice said from beside me. Without thinking I span round, raising the short sword I had drawn - also without thinking - then came to a sudden halt as I saw the person.... the thing in front of me.

"You will not need your weapon," The.... well, the only word springing to mind was ghost - it was the figure of a young woman, mostly see-through, that was floating about six inches off the ground. "My name is Helena, and I am here to help you. Is this your first visit?"

"Yes," I replied, still staring at her curiously. 

"Then I suggest using this," She handed me a piece of parchment that had been folded over several times.

"What's this?" I asked, starting to unfold it. 

"A map created by some of our more enterprising students," Helena replied. "You can ask it for a destination, or to show you where you are. It will guide you where you need to go," She paused, then added, "There are also any number of paintings and portraits that will be able to help you, should you require it." 

"Paintings? Portraits?" I stared at her in confusion.

"You really know nothing about the school, do you?" She said in a comforting voice.

"I was raised in Britain," I explained, hoping that - whoever had programmed this simulation may have included some modern history in it, as well as the history of the universe it was set in. My wish was answered a second later when she nodded.

"My condolences," She gave a polite nod. "Is there anything you would like to know, or anything I can tell you?"

"Do I need to be magical to walk around here?" I asked.

"No - the castle has been adapted for muggles - for non-magical people - and will react to you without a problem."

"Will not being magical limit me as to where I can go?" 

"There are one or two administrative areas that support the simulation that require magic to enter, however I do not believe you will need to enter those."

"Is there anything......" I paused, then smiled. "Is there anything here that might try to kill me?"

"No," She smiled brightly at me. "There are simulations you can start, but they are clearly marked and you have to use a specific phrase to start them."

"If I say the phrase by accident?" I looked at her, "Is that possible?"

"No," She shook her head, "The phrases were picked specifically to avoid accidental activation."

"Than...."

"One caveat to my warning - the castle is a PVP zone, so while the simulation will not try to you, I can not promise you that no one else will."

"Thank you for your warning, and information," I gave her a polite nod, feeling slightly silly about talking to a ghost, then I looked down at the parchment in my hands. 

"The instructions are on the reverse," Helena said helpfully.

"Thank you," I gave her a smile, then turned the map over. "I solemnly swear I am up to no good?" As soon as I finished speaking, a black ink drawing appeared, covering the parchment. In the centre there was a small dot, with the name "MoonChild_Blue" hovering over it.

"Huh," I said, staring at it for a moment.

"Most people start with The Great Hall." I looked at Helena, then back down at the map.

"Show me the way to The Great Hall?" I asked hesitantly, then - somewhat to my surprise - a set of footprints appeared, leading off to the right. Looking up, I saw the same set of footprints in front of me, appearing to be drawn into the floor itself. 

Following their trail, I saw a set of massive double doors - the footprints leading through them.

"Show me how to get to....." I screwed up my eyes, trying to recall even the most basic knowledge about the school, "to Ravenclaw?" At once, the footprints vanished, then reappeared, heading towards the stairs. With a final appreciative glance at the ghostly Helena, I followed the footsteps, heading up what were apparently the main stairs.

3x08

I learned later that I was using something called The Marauders' Map, Version 3.0. It had been something that featured in the books, but the person who had programmed the simulation of the school - of Hogwarts - had upgraded it a little to include the navigation functions, and a masking function.

The original map had attached a person's true name to the dot that represented them. This version allowed you to provide whatever name you wanted, or even to hide yourself from the map completely - a feature added following a visit to the simulation by Parzival and Art3mis six months earlier. They wanted to come incognito, but the simulation had thrown their names up on the map and caused them to be swamped by fans and admirers.

The map was also more helpful than the original version - if you asked it for help, it told you pretty much what you wanted to know. Which was how I learned about cloaking my presence on the map and how to gain access to where I really wanted to go.

3x09 

I had thought gaining access to the Headmaster's office would be a simple task - ask the map where it was, go there and then go in.

But it turns out it was slightly more complicated than that.

First - the staircases moved. Not in an escalator kind of way, but in a "they were in front of me and now they are over there" kind of way. The footsteps that were supposedly leading me to the Headmaster's office took me to a set of steps that - just before I started up them - moved away, leaving me standing in front of empty air.

Quite what this was supposed to accomplish, other than pissing me off, I wasn't certain. Maybe a touch of whimsy to the magical school - "oh look how cute this is - we have staircases that move!"?

But eventually I navigated my way around the various diversions and arrived to stand in front of the door. I reached out and pushed it, but it held fast. I pushed it again, and then I heard a voice above me.

"You have to provide a password, young lady." I looked up in surprise to find myself staring into the eyes of a gargoyle - and a pretty ugly one at that.

"Do you happen to know the password?" I asked as politely as I could manage.

"No."

"So how do I get in?" I asked.

"You have to provide a password," The gargoyle replied, almost looking smug. I rolled my eyes, then looked down at the map, and realised that there was something new - something that hadn't been there before. Above the dot representing my avatar, the words "cockroach cluster" were written in an elegant script - one that was very different from the rest of the text.

"Cockroach cluster?" I frowned, then took a step back in surprise as the door swung open. "That's the password?"

"Apparently so." This time, I was certain it sounded smug. I gave it a final glare, then I walked into the office.

Almost as soon as I entered, I came to a halt again. 

SFO-OFS

I wasn't entirely sure what I had been expecting from the office of The Headmaster of a magical school - I had very little experience of magical schools, and in all the non-magical schools I had seen, from Beecher Falls High to Forks High, from St Trinian's to St Clare's, the various Heads' offices had been pretty standard.

But the office I had walked into was..... something else.

From the phoenix nodding sleepily on the perch to the fully working model of our solar system - complete with a burning sun in the centre - it was all very impressive. The paintings that covered the walls - paintings of people who were all now staring at me, incidentally - were the crowning touch.

I stood in the doorway for a few minutes, simply staring around, then I remembered why I was here.

There were four windows in the office. With a quick glance, I discounted two of them because they faced the lake. The third seemed to overlook the forest, and although there were mountains behind the forest, they weren't as tall as the ones in the picture. 

The fourth was a smallish window that looked out towards the mountains to the north. The mountains looked to be the right ones, and - as I brought up a virtual window and pulled up an image of the painting - I started walking backward and forward until the picture in the painting lined up perfectly with the view out of the window.

I looked down, then knelt down and drew a small cross on the floor in the place the artist must have been stood to have painted that picture.

Closing the window with the painting in, I moved to stand on the cross, staring out of the window. Moving my head slowly, I looked up and down, to see if there was anything on the walls, the ceiling or the floor that would indicate why this position was so special.

Nothing.

I turned a full three hundred and sixty degrees on the spot, wondering if there was any clue anywhere else in the room. But all that achieved was amused laughs from some of the portraits, a politely confused glance from an old woman dressed entirely in green - someone to do with the house called Slytherin I guessed, since they appeared to be overly fond of the colour - and a sneer from a sallow-faced man with the greasiest hair I had ever seen in my life. 

After I had finished turning around, I took a step back and examined the floor where I had been stood. Then I stared up at the ceiling directly above the mark, but found nothing useful in either location.

"So why was I brought here?" I asked myself. There was a chance that the exact view in the painting could appear on another planet - with the number of planets that occupied the twenty seven sectors, it was not impossible that two, or more, might look alike.

Deciding to give it one final try, I pulled a miniature recorder out of my inventory, and set it up on the spot where I had drawn the X. Configuring it to take eighty shots a second at the highest resolution it could, I set it to spin round twice, one degree at a time. I followed it round in its slow spin - so as not to appear in the pictures and potentially block anything I needed to see - then removed it and put it away after it had finished the second spin. 

With a final look around, I turned and walked out of the office, heading back to the entrance hall.

3x0A

I returned to my ship, whispered the password ("The bearers crossed the sea to where the people don't die") and walked inside it. 

Sitting down at the console at the back, I plugged the digital recorder into one of the USB 8.0 sockets, and started to transfer the images across. Which, I admit - given I was just copying the images from one area of the Oasis memory to another area of the Oasis memory - seemed a bit of an odd way of doing it, but eight years before I had been copying files from a website directly into the memory of The Erudite Emerald, and two of them had in fact been viruses that tried to take over control of the ship and fly it into the nearest sun.

Since then, I have copied files to a USB device, then uploaded them into the memory of whatever computer I am using - passing through four of the best anti-virus applications in The Oasis on the way. I know that sounds paranoid, but once you have found yourself plunging towards a giant ball of fire, and getting close enough to see the currents of flame dancing across the surface, you tend to learn a little caution.

I left the images uploading, and walked forward to the cockpit, wondering where I should go next. It was coming up to five o'clock in the evening back in Blackpool, so I thought about returning to Patty's Place and leaving the images to upload to my MCP over night. It was the dead of winter, so it would already be dark.

I stared out of the window again, my gaze roaming over the castle, the lake, the mountains and the forest, wondering if I could be bothered to return to the castle and explore some more. From what I'd seen, the world of Harry Potter looked kind of interesting. But even as I thought, my brain pushed back reflexively - this was the world that, albeit unwillingly, had given birth to a group that had murdered 1200 people. Why would I want anything to do with it?

The console at the back of The Folly beeped, so I put off a decision about my near future and walked back to see the images were fully uploaded. 

Sitting down, I started browsing through them - watching as I was presented a slideshow of the room. I watched it as it flipped through the complete set - without noticing anything of interest - then switched the image player off. I could examine them in more detail back in my control room at Patty's Place - the monitor was of a much higher resolution and I had way better tools.

I moved back to the cockpit and started out towards the castle again.

"Screw it." I fired up the engines, then took hold of the joystick and slowly took off. 

As I watched Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft fall away below me, I span the ship around and pointed the nose up towards the atmosphere. Gunning the engines, I flew off into the sky, already setting a course back to Ludus II,

I was pretty much convinced I would never have to come back to the planet, or the magic school, ever again.

3x0B

Avonlea was still a small dot in the windscreen when I realise that I was - in fact - going to have to go back to Gallifrey, and probably quite soon.

The realisation came in stages - three stages to be exact. 

The first stage was when I realised that there was one major difference between the view out of the window from the Headmaster's office compared to the painting of the view out of the window from the Headmaster's office.

When I was staring out of the window, I saw the grounds, the mountains and the sky. 

When I was looking at the picture, I saw the grounds, the mountains and the sky. And a spaceship. A spaceship with three people stood around it.

The second stage was the fact the sky out of the window had clouds and a sun. The sky in the painting had stars. Suggesting the painting was painted at night, rather than during the day.

And the third - the third popped out at me when I was re-reading the previous few journal entries (mostly the ones about the painting, to see if I had been more observant back then than I apparently was now).

_"No one at school knows my real name," I pressed on. "So it wasn't anyone there."_

_"What about one of your friends?" He asked._

_"I asked them - they all say it wasn't them, and I can't see why it would be." I shrugged. "Can you think of anyone who might have sent it?" He started at the bedspread for a long while, then looked up and shook his head._

_"Sorry, sweetheart," He said regretfully. "I can't think of anyone who might know your real name who might also have known your mother."_

_"How many know my real name?" I asked hopefully._

_"Three or four, maybe six at a push," He admitted. "Do you want me to talk to them?"_

_"Could I?" I suggested. "Maybe they will talk to me about it, if I ask them?"_

_I can put you in touch with them," He agreed. "But I am pretty sure none of them would have done this either - as far as I know, none of them knows your mother." I sighed._

_"I don't suppose you know what they key might be?"_

It hadn't occurred to me at the time - lying on a sumptuous bed in Castle Harfang had addled my brain a little, plus it had been a very long day - but there was something off about what my father had said.

My mother died when I was one month old - if my father was to be believed. That would put it around the 5th of December, 2011. Around a year before The Oasis came on line.

Yet - as our discussion about my mother had wound down, my father had indicated that, while six or so of his friends know what my real name is - and so could have referred to me as "Kim", none of those friends who know my real name know my mother. 

Know. 

Not knew.

KNOW.

"She's alive."


	5. The First Wedding

(19th of January, 2047)

4x00

I glanced up at the clock in my classroom, and smiled.

"Guys? It's time." All the students looked up - every single one of them staring back at me. "The Headmistress has arranged to show the event in the dining hall. If you would all like to make your way there, the event starts in about half an hour." I watched as they all packed up their bags and books, then filed out of the classroom heading for the main dining hall.

When the classroom was empty, I slipped the notebook out of my desk and into the bag I carried. I had started using a notebook - albeit a digital one - to my investigations in relation to my mother. It seemed a little old fashioned, even to me, but it helped to marshal my thoughts and what I had found out.

Which wasn't all that much, but then again I had only been at it for two weeks. And there wasn't all that much to go on to start with. 

My father had lied to me. Or maybe he hadn't. He had spent the early part of my birthday flying from Sector 1 (where he kept his Oasis residence) to Sector 27 and back. Even using the star-gates, this was a 5 hour journey in each direction. With a three hour meeting on Caffalo, that meant he had had a thirteen hour day, even before he met me on Staples 101.

So it was entirely possible that - due to being tired - his comment about my mum had been a slip of the tongue. That he hadn't meant to imply she was still alive, and just used the wrong word.

It was an entirely plausible explanation, but unfortunately i didn't buy a word of it. And - also equally unfortunately - I hadn't worked up the courage to ask him about it yet. 

The pictures of Dumbledore's office (I remembered what Michelle had called it, and looked it up on line. Dumbledore was the Headmaster of Hogwarts for most of the series, until he was replaced by the sallow-bat faced man I had seen in one of the paintings) hadn't revealed anything of interest - other than the fact Phoenixes do not show up on recordings. That had been a bit of a surprise, but then - they were a magical creature so maybe it was par for the course. 

I had spent an entire day examining them at maximum resolution, just in case there were tiny words carved into the stones or one of the portraits had a detail in the background that wasn't obvious to the naked eye. But nothing had come of that, other than managing to create an animated slideshow of the Slytherin Headmistress (who - the legend under her picture informed me - was named Minerva Mary McGonagall) walking away from her frame and into a house in the background. 

I had yet to return to Gallifrey, and to the castle, because term had started up again and I didn't have as much free time as I did during the holidays. The one thing I knew I needed to do was see if I could find the exact time the starscape in the picture matched the starscape out of the window.

I knew it must be possible, because - while the suns rose and set on Gallifrey (meaning that the planet rotated on an axis), I had managed to confirm that it didn't orbit the suns. It was in the class of semi-stationary planets (there were three classes - totally stationary were the ones that didn't rotate or orbit, semi-stationary were the ones that rotated but didn't orbit, and non-stationary which were the ones that behaved like planets in the real word and orbited a central point) which meant that - at some point during the night - the stars would align with the picture.

It was a bit of a long shot, but - quite honestly - it was all I had to go on. 

"Miss? Aren't you coming?" I looked up to see Susan and her boyfriend (John Smith) at the door.

"I'll be along in a moment," I said, "Go find yourselves some seats." 

"Just don't be late - you wouldn't want to miss it, Miss." With the parting comment, Susan and John walked off down the corridor. I locked up my desk again, then stood up and followed them. Because - while trying to find out what was going on with my mother, the key, the painting and so on was important, Susan was right - I would not miss this for the world.

Because today was The Oasis' equivalent of a royal wedding. 

Today, Art3mis and Parzival were getting married.

4x01

Weddings in The Oasis were not uncommon - in fact, they happened so often, that most nations now accepted that if two citizens of their country got married within the virtual world, the marriage would be legally binding in the real world as well. 

This also sort of applied to weddings between citizens of different countries, with the caveat attached that - when one of the people involved moved to the country the other one lived in, they register there as a citizen. Until that point, the wedding was considered provisional, because - while most countries had come to recognise the odd situations that The Oasis threw up, they were not willing to accept that two people who had never met in real life, and never would meet in real life, could actually be considered married.

A lot of people opted for weddings in The Oasis simply because the real world was kind of depressing, and given the choice between a short ceremony in a dingy church, followed by a small reception in an equally grotty hall of some type and a lavish ceremony in Atlantis, or Rivendell, followed by a reception in Arendelle Castle or the Grand Ballroom of The Tardis, people rarely chose dingy and grotty.

Every major and minor religion had granted permission for their Ministers to perform virtual weddings, so it was very unlikely that a couple wanting to marry wouldn't be able to find something to their tastes. And even if that unlikely situation occurred, there were areas set aside on most planets where temporary structures could be assembled for the more particular couples. 

The wedding of Art3mis and Parzival, however, was anything other than your common or garden wedding. 

The entire Oasis had been talking about it for nearly four months, ever since it had been announced over their respective TV Channels, and the newsfeeds had talked about it almost non-stop for the past three weeks. It appeared that, despite them both being notoriously private, they accepted that they were - arguably - public figures, which was something of an understatement. Even now, more than a year after the end of The Quest, the vast majority of Oasis users still felt a massive debt of gratitude to them for everything they did to prevent The Sixers and Sorrento from taking over the world we loved so much. 

The wedding was to take place at Castle Anorak (Parzival had not renamed it, for much the same reason he had not taken the title) in front of around a hundred invited guests. According to rumour and gossip, the code that supported Chthonia had been altered to prevent anyone without an invitation from even landing on the planet, let alone coming to the castle. Not that anyone would consider trying to crash the event - the almost universal respect held for these two people ensured that no one would even consider it.

But everyone else - and I do mean EVERYONE ELSE - would be watching the ceremony on a live feed that would be broadcast on every news channel, as well as the channels of Art3mis, Parzival, Shoto and Aech (who were acting as best man and maid of honour respectively. There was some confusion as how to Aech - someone who was obviously male and very masculine at that - had been picked to be maid of honour, however given that he and Shoto were held in equally high honour as Art3mis and Parzival, no one was going to publicly question this choice.)

Two days before, Headmistress Sasser had announced the entire school had the afternoon off to watch the ceremony, either at home or in the dining room, and - from an email I received from Michelle, I got the idea that every single school on Ludus II would be shut down for much the same reason.

Then I received an email from my father which pretty much confirmed every business in The Oasis would be shut down for the afternoon. With the possible exception of the climax of The Quest, it would be the single most watched event in the history of The Oasis - putting even the trial of Nolan Sorrento well into second place.

As I walked into the dining room, the party was already well under way. It seemed that everyone wanted to celebrate the wedding of the century, and no one had any desire to stop them.

Well - almost no one.

4x02

The clock at the end of the dining room switched over to 3pm, OST, and everyone turned their attention to the newsfeed projected on the giant screen.

"As as the time reaches 3 o'clock, all eyes turn to Castle Anorak. The guests are assembled, and the master of ceremonies - none other than Ogden Morrow himself - is stood at the end of the aisle, in front of the giant bower that has been set up. All we now await is the wedding party and I think...... I think that that is them now," The presenter fell silent, as did the crowd and everyone in the dining hall, as the doors to Castle Anorak slowly opened to reveal two men stood in the entrance. 

"And now we have our first sight of Parzival and Shoto. Shoto - the best man, and one of the renowned High Five - is dressed in a formal Samurai outfit, complete with sword. Parzival is - for the first time in over a year - dressed in the robes of Anorak - the avatar that first belonged to James Halliday and has become recognised as the symbol of the current ruler of The Oasis." The presenter fell silent again as the two men walked down the aisle, and the assembled guests rose to their feet - an indication of just how highly this young man was regarded, since the guests generally didn't stand up until the bride arrived.

Parzival and Shoto came to a halt in front of Morrow, then - in perfect unison - they both turned to look back at the castle. 

"The doors to the castle are opening again," The presenter said in a hushed tone, then quietened down again as a young man, dressed in a very smart tuxedo, and a young woman - dressed in a formalised version of what had now become her signature armour. In place of the typical bride's train, Art3mis wore a long, flowing cloak of black, edged with crimson. 

They paused as the top of the aisle, then Art3mis proceeded down it, with Aech holding the bottom of her cape. 

A swell of music filled the air - blasting out from invisible speakers that had been set up around the area. It took me a moment to place it - the song was written nearly three decades before I was born and I'd never liked 80s music much. 

"'Time After Time' was the song that Parzival and Art3mis bonded over when The Distracted Globe was attacked," The presenter piped up "The Sixers attempted to assassinate one or both of them to prevent them from completing Hallidy's Quest." 

Art3mis walked in time with the music, with Aech keeping step behind her. She arrived at the end of the aisle as the song ended, coming to stand next to Parzival. Aech arranged her cape behind her, then walked round to stand next to her.

The screen then split in two - the left half showing the view from over Ogden Morrow's shoulder, while the right was a view from behind Parzival and Art3mis. 

"Friends," Morrow said with a wide, expansive smile on his face. "We are here today to celebrate the wedding of two of our friends, and two of our greatest citizens. I first met Parzival and Art3mis during the hunt for James' egg, and since then I have seen then go from strength to strength. They - along with Shoto and Aech - have become some of the best people I know, and I can truly say that it is an honour to know them, and that between them, they are carrying forward James' legacy in a way of which he would be very proud." He paused, then smiled. "However, we are not here to talk about the past, but to guide these two young people in to a bright and glorious future." He paused for a moment, then continued.

"A wedding is always a joyful occasion, and while I know that both the bride and groom revel in the idea of informality, there are, alas, some formalities that can not be avoided, even when you are master of all your survey." There was a ripple of laughter, and the left hand camera clearly caught Art3mis rolling her eyes.

"So - with the usual trepidation and concern, I ask this one time," He paused, obviously playing the moment for all it was worth. "Is there anyone here who objects to this union?" There was a moment of absolute silence, then everything seemed to happen at once. 

There was a loud banging noise, and - almost at the same time - Aech jumped in front of Art3mis, pushing her to the ground and lying on top of her. Simultaneously, Parzival reached out his left hand and seemed to pluck something out of the air.

None of this seemed to make much sense - especially to those of us watching on the big projection - but as Aech pulled Art3mis to her feet and started ushering her back down the aisle, it soon became more obvious what had happened.

Someone had taken a shot at Art3mis - someone had tried to kill her.

4x03

Terrorism was very, very rare in The Oasis.

Not acts of violence - they happened every day. But that was the nature of The Oasis - a video game where, in some areas, the law was kill or be killed.

Even large scale acts of violence - the annihilation of IOI-1, the Montegue assassinations and, of course, The Battles of Frobozz and Chthonia - were just a few examples of the somewhat bloody history of The Oasis.

But large scale actions of political violence? I could count the number of these on less than one hand. Even when the gunter clans blew the hell out of IOI-1 that wasn't an act of political violence, it was an act of revenge (and a fairly justified one at that!)

Arguably the most famous one was The Sixers' attack on The Distracted Globe, but to this day there were still arguments about whether it was truly a terrorist attack or not. The Sixers motivation could arguably described as political - they didn't want anyone else to run The Oasis - but the general feeling was that it was more motivated by money and a desire for power than the political ideology of IOI High Command.

The only real act of terrorism in Oasis history followed the bombing of Washington DC in 2017. The group responsible for that - calling themselves The True Owners of America - tried to continue their warped quest to bring "justice to the people" in The Oasis, by blowing up a number of schools on Ludus. Unfortunately, since Ludus was - even back then - a no PVP zone, most of the schools were destroyed but not a single avatar was killed.

It was also the only time that Anorak - James Halliday himself - had taken personal action against any avatar. Rumour has it that he hunted each avatar down and killed them in a number of interesting and inventive ways. Of course, there are no records of this, and no witnesses left to verify it one way or the other - the advantage to being an all powerful avatar with beyond system level privileges is that you can pretty much do what you want without anyone knowing you have done it.

So when we witnessed the attempted assassination of the soon-to-be-wife of the ruler of The Oasis, we all thought we knew what would happen next. 

And - to be fair - we were half right.

4x04

As soon as it became apparent that Art3mis was not dead - Aech and Shoto were covering her back to the castle doors - most of the guests jumped to their feet, all drawing weapons of various kinds. 

Which was a good thing, because an instant after that, twenty five people seemed to appear from nowhere. They were dressed in yellow and black robes, all carrying short swords. They reached guests in a few seconds, and waded into the crowd, swinging their swords as they went. 

The entire dining room - hell, the entire OASIS - watched as the battle unfolded. However, we didn't watch for long, because there have been very few battles that have been this one sided.

For a start, the guests out numbered the attacking force by around five to one. 

Secondly - the vast majority of the guests were very high level avatars. Former gunters, friends of Aech from the PVP circuits. and they got to that level by being very, very good at what they did. Which was, essentially, killing people for money. 

And whoever the group in black and yellow were, it was fairly clear they were neither high level nor all that skilled. However had planned this attack had counted on the shooter taking down Art3mis, and in the aftermath of her death, launching the attack on a stunned and surprised crowd.

However, when Aech and Parzival had combined to save Art3mis' live, the rest of the plan had collapsed. 

The battle continued for another few minutes, then the doors to Castle Anorak opened again and three figures emerged. Dressed from head to toe in battle armour, Aech, Shoto and Art3mis took two steps outside the doors, then - as if they had rehearsed the move - they each placed the small figure of a robot on the ground in front of them. A second later there was a flash of light and the three robots I had seen during the final battle of The Quest stood in front of Castle Anorak.

"SURRENDER NOW, OR WE WILL KILL YOU." Artm3is' voice seemed to echo throughout the entire Oasis - and given how many screens it would have been being broadcast on, it was entirely possible that that was the case - but while it was clear everyone had heard her, if only because it would have been impossible for them not to, none of the attackers stopped fighting.

"Honey?" Art3mis' voice was slightly softer, but still surprisingly reverberant. "Could you freeze then?" 

"Of course, sweetie," Parzival grinned up at his bride, then he raised his hand. A moment later, the eleven remaining attackers all froze, and the rest of the guests backed off a few steps.

"Now perhaps you can explain what....." Art3mis' stopped in mid-sentence as all eleven avatars vanished. Art3mis' robot stared down at the ground, then looked over at Parzival.

"It wasn't me!" He exclaimed, looking as bewildered as everyone else. 

"Perhaps we should discuss this later." Morrow's voice was calm, but surprisingly firm for a man of his age. Parzival looked at him, then gave a single nod. "Besides - I believe we have a wedding to finish." This time Parzival smiled and looked back down the aisle at the giant robot.

"What do you say, love? Want to get married today?" The robot literally jumped for joy, causing the ground to shake when it landed. Another flash of light, and Art3mis reappeared in front of the castle.

"So - where were we?"

4x05

"So - with even more than the usual trepidation and concern, I ask this once again," He paused, though this seemed more about checking the surrounding area than attempting to play to the guests. "Is there anyone here who objects to this union?" The scene was exactly the same as before, except Shoto and Aech were still in their giant robot forms, standing on either side of the bower at the end of the aisle. In addition, every one of the guests still had their weapons out and Art3mis had not changed out of her battle gear.

For a few seconds, the entire Oasis held its breath, waiting to see if anything else would happen.

But then we collectively exhaled and Morrow continued with the ceremony.

"Parzival - do you take Art3mis to be your lawfully wedded wife? To have and to hold, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, no matter what the fates may bring, from this day forth until time no longer flows?" 

"I do"

"Artm3mis - do you take Parzival to be your lawfully wedded husband? To have and to hold, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, no matter what the fates may bring, from this day forth until time no longer flows?"

"I do"

"Do you both confirm that there is no reason that you cannot enter into this union?"

"I do"

"I do"

"Do you both confirm that this is of your own free will, and that you are not under duress, coercion or other means of compulsion?"

"I do" Art3mis replied.

"Well - Arty said she'd hunt me down and kill me if I backed out. Does that count?" Parzival asked, causing the guests to laugh, Morrow to roll his eyes and Art3mis to dig him in the side with her elbow. "I do," He added.

"Then, by the power vested in me by.... well - by me," Morrow grinned. "I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride."

The entire dining room burst in to applause, cheers and the odd wolf-whistle as they embraced. This went on for a few minutes - both the applauding and the kissing - then Morrow's voice cut through the noise.

"To all those here present, and to the many billions watching across The Oasis, my I present Art3mis and Parzival!" He lead another round of applause as Parzival and Art3mis both bowed - blushing quite a lot. 

The newsfeed suddenly split into four - with one feed continuing to show the wedding, whilst the other three images flashed on halls, on pubs, on castles and on offices around The oasis. From one side of the virtual world to the other, all you could see what people standing, applauding and cheering as Parzival and Art3mis walked, hand in hand, back down the aisle towards their castle, with Morrow and the newly reappeared Aech and Shoto following.

4x06

The party at S4-MW-3599 went on for quite a while, and a few hours later I finally climbed into my ship and started home. There had been plenty of beer, wine and other alcohol flowing at the party, but - based on an idea that I think came from Deep Space Nine - the person drinking it could either allow it to simulate the real affects of alcohol, or they could shake them off in an instant. 

So while I had been drinking quite a lot, I was perfectly sober when I got in The Folly and flew off in to the big beyond for my trip home. A trip that was so routine that I set the HUD to display some of the pictures I had taken while I was at Hogwarts.

I had been doing this on and off for the past two weeks, hoping that by only examining a few at a time, I could maybe see something I hadn't spotted when looking through all of them.

The first three or four pictures went by, then - as the fifth one came up, I stared at in surprise. Hitting the pause button, I continued to stare at it as my ship flew through space.

The picture was of yet another former Headmistress of Hogwarts. The caption said "SUSAN ABBOT-BONES, HUFFLEPUFF, HEADMISTRESS OF HOGWARTS 2032 - 2040."

It was a picture of a somewhat plump woman in her mid fifties, dressed in formal school robes. 

Robes of black and yellow.


	6. Lost And Found

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So what is a girl to do when she is imprisoned in a cell on The Isle of The Lost, facing death at the hands of the three most evil people who ever lived?
> 
> I am really asking, because quite honestly I could really do with some help right about now!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Descendants" belongs to Disney & ABC Television, and all the characters mentioned herein belong to their original creators.

5x00

I looked around the room again, staring at each wall in turn. Unsurprisingly, they looked exactly the same as they had for the last hour. Stone, with iron banding around the top and bottom. The ceiling was stone as well, and so was the floor. 

One wall was different, of course - it had a door in it. A solid, wooden door with iron bands across it. There was a lock in it, but the key it took was unique - not one I would be able to craft or gain access to in the near future. 

Not that that mattered - if my watch was correct (it was - every watch in The Oasis was digital, and was time-synced to the central time server) then I had around eight and a half minutes before the guards would come, open the cell door, lead me down the corridor to the central convocation chamber where I would be presented to The Queen and her Royal Daughter.

At which point, I would be executed.

All in all - not one of my better days.

5x01

So, you are probably wondering how I ended up stuck in a 6ft by 6ft stone cell in the underground tunnels of The Fortress Grimholde at the heart of The Isle of The Lost. Or you would be wondering that if you knew I was in such a cell :) 

The truth is, it's mostly down to boredom. Boredom and frustration.

In the six weeks since the attack on Parzival's wedding, no one had been able to learn anything about the attackers. Who they were, why they wanted to kill Art3mis' avatar, what their overall aim was - nothing.

Which was very strange, because - between them - Parzival and Og had complete and total control of The Oasis. And I know that sounds like hyperbole, but I actually mean it literally. They could access the details of any avatar - quest history, experience, inventory and so forth - and, if they felt it necessary, they could look into The Oasis user record files and find out the real names of the users who used the various avatars.

So the fact that the avatars involved in the assassination attempt were managing to stay hidden was fairly impressive and somewhat confusing - at least to those who ran The Oasis. (We - the general public - weren't directly privy to all of this, incidentally, but the newsfeeds kept us up to date about the progress - or more accurately, the lack of progress - in the investigation and the ever growing confusion that this lack of progress was engendering amongst the great and mighty.)

In the same six weeks, I had also failed to make any progress on decoding my mother's puzzle. While the assassination attempt had prompted some renewed interest in the world of Harry Potter, it appeared that The Oasis High Council had decided that it was either a co-incidence, or an attempt to throw suspicion on to someone else. So while all of the Potter sites across The Oasis had recorded an uptick in attendance, they were not raided or shut down or any other type of response from The High Council. 

Which meant I had been able to return to Hogwarts at the appropriate time, and had taken a picture that exactly matched the portrait I had been given. And for all that work - for all that effort, fuel, expense and a minor fight with another starship in orbit around Gallifrey - all I ended up with was a digital picture that matched the portrait. 

No spaceship, sudden bolt from the blue. 

So - to alleviate the frustration and boredom (and the occasional urge to see if I could crack into The Oasis databanks and find out who had left me the damn picture) - I started browsing the message boards again, looking for information about new quests, or at least quests that were new to me. 

I did this every so often - while teaching was fun, and going on quests with my father and Cathleen was also fun, I occasionally wanted to go out on my own, or with a group I didn't know, just for a bit of a challenge. Plus there were some quests that I could not go on with my father, no matter how fun they might be. The most recent example of this was a Star Trek based quest to liberate the Orian slave-ship Vandrocil, for which I had to go undercover as one of the slaves. 

I am very open minded, especially in a virtual world, but having my father watch me pretend to be a sex-slave is something that is way beyond my comfort zone.

Which is how I met up with a group that called themselves The Crystal Worriers (which, it turns out, was a typo when they originally registered their group on the message board, but one they couldn't be bothered to correct) and how I agreed to join them for a quest they were going to attempt.

And how I ended up in this cell.

5x02

I looked at my watch again - six minutes to go. I stood up and walked over to the cell door and pushed it again. While I knew it was pointless - Her Royal Majesty was not going to leave any flaws in her plan - a tiny of part of me knew that there had to be an escape. 

Even though this was a real quest - in that, if I got killed, I would stay dead and have to create a brand new avatar - I was an expert authority on the history of The Oasis, and I knew that every single quest created (with the possible exception of The Quest for The Egg) was doable. 

The Oasis was a video game. Even now, when it had mutated into so much more, it was still a video game at heart. And no games designer worth their salt would design a game where you can't complete it. Yes - some games you have to die in, but then you are brought back to continue the battle. And some games are so very, very difficult that it seems like they are impossible. But even those are completable - once you figure them out.

So even though I was sat in this cell awaiting execution, I knew that there had to be some way out of it. That the quest could not automatically end with my execution and avatar death, because it would go against everything that made The Oasis what it was.

The idea that my death might now not be avoidable because the five of us who came on this quest had screwed up earlier was not something I wanted to think about.

The door didn't give, didn't ope. It stayed closed and locked. I dropped to my knees and peered through the keyhole. Quite what I was hoping to find, I didn't know, but it beat sitting doing nothing while waiting for my impending death.

Getting to my feet again, I tried - not for the first time - to access my inventory. But - not for the first time - I got a message saying "This function is not available at this time" and let out a quiet curse.

I looked back at the bench - my home for the last ninety minutes - then took eight steps back (all I could manage in the cramped space) and charged towards the door, smacking into it with my shoulder.

5x03

My first meeting with The Worriers was held in a cafe on a planet called New Mathis, that was around fifteen minutes from Ludus II. Which, I guess, should have been a clue as to who The Worriers were. 

I walked into the cafe (The CyberByte Cafe) and looked around. Cafes weren't all that common in The Oasis, because while the VR word could simulate eating, it wasn't that popular an activity except, oddly, during quests. The avatars all had health points - points that could be lost if you were shot, stabbed, gored, burned or injured in a myriad of other ways, and that could be restored by eating virtual food (generally apples for some reason.)

The food didn't have any effect in the real world - you still had to eat actual food, no matter how much virtual food you scarfed down. But ask any adventurer, any quester, and they will tell you when you are on the edge of death, a virtual apple tastes better than anything you will find in the real world.

So I wasn't all that surprised to find that the cafe wasn't an actual cafe - where you got snacks, drinks and the like - but instead an old fashioned cyber-cafe, where each table had two computers on, and a bank of computers across the right and left hand sides. The back wall was decorated with twenty monitors, all tuned to various news channels, sports channels and so forth. They had no sound - listening to twenty channels at once would have been an nightmare - but you could get headphones and plug them in to your table and pick whichever channel you wanted to.

The group I was looking for was sat halfway back on the left hand side, gathered around one table. Entirely out of habit, my left hand slipped down to my side, resting on the grip of my combat pistol. The CyberByte was in a PVP zone, and - even though I didn't expect a trap - I was automatically cautious.

I realise I was now attracting some attention, so I walked calmly over to the table.

"The Crystal Worriers?" I asked. Four people - two men and two women, all of them young - looked back at me.

"MoonChild_Blue?" The young woman asked. I nodded, and she gestured for me to take a seat. "My name is BHS Girl- you can call me Banksy, and I am - for want of a better phrase, the head of this little group." She gestured to the other three in turn. "This is FDLC, Master Fu's Wisdom and Mary Celeste."

"Mary Celeste?" I looked at the red haired girl with a questioning look.

"Why not?" Mary replied. I shrugged.

"No reason - just curious." I looked back at Banksy. "You are looking for a fifth? To go on a quest out in Sector Eight?"

"Yes," She nodded. "There's a planet called Katzenberg 91 that is home to a large number of Disney simulations and recreations," She looked up at me "You don't have a problem with missions based on kids' films, do you MoonChild_Blue?"

"First - call me MoonChild, MCB or Luna," I replied. "And secondly - no, I have no problems with kids' films, Disney films or anything else. A lot of the answers to life's questions can be found in Disney films and other films designed for kids - I think they were designed that way."

"Huh?" FDLC looked at me in confusion.

"Kids learn at a much faster rate than adults, and have very few - if any - preconceived notions of how the world works," I explained. "So if you put morals, and educational crap, into their films, they will retain it far longer than most adults will retain stuff they see in their films." I paused. "So what can you tell me?"

5x04 

"OWWWW!!!" I bounced off the door, and crashed to the ground, landing on my wrist. I glared back up at the door, wondering if I could melt it with the power of my eyes.

Apparently I couldn't.

I lay on the floor for a few minutes, holding my arm - which I had apparently injured when smacking against a fairly solid wooden door - and just felt slightly glad that at least none of my new team-mates had seen this glorious manoeuvre of mine.

"I have to say, Mal - that was fairly impressive." 

Despite the multitude of books I'd read, and that I had heard read, during my years of teaching, I had never heard that amount of amusement - and sarcasm - in a single phrase before. Looking up, I saw a face peering in from a newly appeared gap in the stone ceiling.

"Evie."

5x05

"The quest is called 'The Liberation of Auradon'," Banksy said, reading from the screen in front of her. "The United States of Auradon have been under repeated assault from the armies of Queen Maleficent and Princess Jane Faery for the past fourteen years. The situation has been getting steadily worse, and the country is coming to a breaking point. Which is where we come in."

"Okay," I nodded. "What do we have to do?"

"Put simply, we have to rescue three women from the dungeons of The Fortress of Grimholde on The Isle of The Lost, return them to The Cathedral so that one of them can use the magic wand to restore the barrier." I stared at Banksy with a look of polite confusion. "You want me to explain a little more?"

"Yes please."

"Thirty five years ago, King Adam and his wife Belle united the fairy tale realms to create Auradon. At the same time, they ensured a lasting peace by imprisoning all the villains on a single island - The Isle of The Lost." Banksy paused "You with me so far?

"Yup."

"What the King and Queen hadn't foreseen was that the villains would have children, and that - because of the magical barrier used to seal off the island - the kids would be trapped there as well," Banksy sighed. "Twenty years later, the new King - Adam's son Ben - decided to grant a pardon to four of the children, who - after all - had been imprisoned without trial for their entire lives."

"I take it it didn't end well?"

"Actually it went better than you'd think," Banksy smiled. "The kids decided to turn against their parents and become part of Auradon. To the point where the leader of the kids - Mal - married the prince who had freed her." 

"Peace in our time." I smiled, which then turned into a frown. "You mentioned a war?"

"On coronation day - when the then Prince Ben was due to be crowned - a young woman named Jane decided to rebel against her mother, and The Crown." She sighed. "She was jealous of Mal - a child born of evil had become the darling of The Royal Family, while she was generally viewed as a disappointment to her mother - and when she saw an opportunity to make a name for herself, she took it."

"Why do I get the feeling it didn't end well?" I asked. "You know - aside from the whole war thing."

"During her little act of rebellion, Jane accidentally destroyed the barrier around the prison isle, releasing Maleficent in the process. The Dark One came to the coronation and tried to get her daughter to rejoin her and launch a war against Auradon - to punish all those who had imprisoned and punished them."

"She failed?" 

"Mal had fallen in love, and had no desire to start a war," Banksy nodded. "When she told her mother this, Maleficent turned to Jane and offered her a chance to step out of her mother's shadow."

"Jane took it." I said - this time it wasn't a question.

"Maleficent took her - and the wand - back to The Isle, where they set about creating a place they could run a war from. Using the wand, they built a fortress - Grimholde. They stayed silent for a year, then on the first anniversary of the coronation, a fleet of dragons attacked the jubilee celebrations killing around a hundred, wounding three or four hundred and wrecking most of the first city."

"Oh dear," I sighed.

"Two years later, King Ben and Queen Mal sent a strike team into Grimholde, to try to steal the wand back," Banksy continued. "They got the wand, and for a few days, things were looking up." She sighed, "Then The Dark One sent a raiding party in response, and kidnapped The Fairy Godmother, The King's Mother Belle and Snow White. They haven't been seen since, but the general theory is they are alive."

"What about the wand?" I asked. "If they have it back....."

"Only The Fairy Godmother can use it properly," FDCL explained. "We've attempted to use it in the past, but none of us has the control required to use it properly."

"So our quest is to rescue The Fairy Godmother, Queen Belle and Snow White from the villains, and get them back home to use the wand to use the wand," I paused, then nodded. "Not the strangest quest I have ever been on." The other four laughed.

"We've provisionally assigned some roles," Mary said. "There are six roles you can play as good guys."

"Good guys?" 

"The quest has two sides," Fu said quickly. "You can either play the rescue squad, or the villains that try to stop them," He smiled. "We wanted to be good guys."

"Oh - okay," I shrugged. "So who's who?"

"No - who's on first," Banksy said quietly, making me laugh. She grinned back at me, then turned to Mary. "Mary is, arguably, the smartest one here - no offence intended - so we made her Lonnie, the Head of Auradon Intelligence. She has all the information about Grimholde and ways on and off The Isle."

"Lonnie." I nodded.

"Fu is playing Jay - son of Jafar....."

"From Alladin?" 

"The self-same" Fu nodded.

"He's a master theif, and will be in charge of getting in and out of the fortress." Banksy continued, then looked at FDLC. "FD here is Doug, the child of Dopey and Duella."

"Dopey?" I raised an eyebrow. "The dwarf?" 

"The most loyal of Snow White's supporters," FDLC nodded. "And - weirdly - Doug is also a genius. Headmaster of Auradon Prep and our weapons master."

"And finally me - Evie," Banksy smiled. "I am the daughter of The Evil Queen - but, like Mal, Jay and Carlos, I turned my back on my mother and am now part of the army of light, so to speak."

"Evie is my girlfriend," FDLC continued. "Which is helpful, since Banksy and I are also a couple."

"I'm also a witch," Banksy continued. "So I am on defensive magic - protecting the group from rogue and dark spells."

"Are you a witch?" I asked in surprise. "I mean - a magic using avatar?"

"No," She shook her head. "But the quest grants you the powers you need to play the role you want to play."

"Okay," I nodded. "So who am I?"

"There are three roles left, though I am going to take a guess as to which one you are going to take," Banksy grinned. "There is Carlos - son of Cruella De'Ville, and expert sword fighter. There is Ben, King of Auradon and melee master." 

"Who's the third?" 

"Mal Bertha Faery, daughter of Maleficent, Queen of Auradon and grand high witch. She is one of the three most powerful magic users in Auradon - a talent she inherited from her mother." 

"Offensive magic?" I asked, and Banksy nodded.

"She is the strongest weapon we have, and will be used to blunt the magic that Maleficent, that The Evil Queen, that Jafar and that Jane can throw at us," FDLC said. "From the one or two reviews I've seen of the quest, she definitely has a lot of fun on it, and....." He stopped as I held my hand up.

"You had me at Mal," I said, smiling. "When do we go?"

5x06

"Evie." I stared up at the hole in the ceiling, then realised I was staring up at my friend. "Evie?"

"That's my name, Mallory," Evie replied in a smug tone. "Now are you going to lie there all day, or do you want to be rescued?"

"The floor's kind of comfortable, Evelyn," I grinned back. "But I suppose if you want to build up your XP by helping me, who am I to deny you the pleasure?" I got to my feet, then looked up at the ceiling again. "Any idea how you are going to get me up there, sweetie?"

"You doubt me?" She clasped her hands to her breasts and drew in a shocked breath. "Come and stand under the hole." I gave her a suspicious look.

"This isn't going to be like the time you set up the bucket on the bedroom door, is it?"

"You doubt me?" She asked again, and I couldn't help laughing. I walked under the hole in the ceiling, then looked straight up.

"So? What's next?" Evie smiled down at me, then - moving her had so fast I barely saw it - she flicked her right palm upwards. As she did, I flew up into the air and shot through the hole. Reflexively, I put my hands up in case I smacked into the roof, but - before the impact - I came to a dead stop, floating in the air. 

I looked over at Evie, and she gently pushed her hand towards me and I floated to the side until my feet were over solid floor - solid ceiling again. Finally, she slowly lowered her right palm again, and I felt myself touch down.

"So - do I give good lift or what?" Evie asked with a huge grin on her face. 

"I am suitably impressed." I couldn't help grinning back at her - Banksy had a very infectious smile - then I looked around. "So where are the others?"

"Doug and Jay are searching the rest of the dungeons, looking for Belle, Snow and The Fairy Godmother, and Lonnie is keeping watch at the entrance."

"I'm due to be executed in three minutes - if mommy dearest comes down here before we're gone, she's going to notice," I glanced down the.... whatever it was we were in. "Can we go?"

"If we leave without our three hostages, we might as well not have come." Evie pointed out. "I'm not looking forward to a reunion with mother any more than you are, sweetie, but we have to give Jay and Doug time to do their thing." 

"Okay," I nodded reluctantly, then followed her along the overhead passage until we came to another gap. Dropping down, we found ourselves stood next to Lonnie at the entrance.

"We've got about two minutes before the guards come." I said quietly. "Can we hold them off?" Lonnie looked around at me, then stared through the door again.

"We can try."

5x07

"How do you plan to get back?" His Royal Majesty Adam asked us. "The Dark One closed the path that was used to bring you here, my daughter - you will not be able to use it to attack."

"We are aware, your Majesty," Lonnie said quietly. "However there is an underground passage that leads from the docks down at Derlmere through to the docks on The Isle of The Lost."

"There is?" Adam asked in bemusement. "When was that built?" Lonnie blushed.

"Forgive me, your Majesty," She said apologetically. "When Jane brought the barrier down, my parents and I knew that war might be inevitable. So we began to plan for the future - a future which included the possible invasion and occupation of The Isle of The Lost."

"And why did you not tell me about it?" Adam asked imperiously.

"Because of a situation like this, my father," I said quietly. "Her Majesty Belle and The Fairy Godmother are both in the hands of The Dark One - and while I do not wish to alarm you, it is possible that my mother has been questioning them. We could not afford to tell them things they did not need to know." Adam stared at me darkly for a few moments, then sighed.

"You are right, my child," He said wearily. "Very well - the five of you should go as soon as possible. Bring them home - bring my wife back to me."

"Yes, your majesty."

SFO-OFS

An hour later, we arrived at The Isle end of the tunnel, and stared up at the ladder.

"From what I understand, the ladder comes out in the catacombs of Grimholde," Lonnie said, pulling out a short sword. "If The Dark One isn't utterly insane, the prisoners will be in the cells. All we need do is sneak up, find our friends, then bring them back down. The Dark One will never know we've been here."

"Sounds easy," I said.

"Of course, if we are detected by the guards, then we will probably be killed." Lonnie smiled at me. "Still want to come?"

"And miss all this?" I smiled back at her. "I suggest I go first, then Lonnie, Jay, Doug and Evie."

"Any particular reason?" Jay asked.

"If there are guards - or friends of my mother - I will have the best chance to distract and fight them," I said. "And while we are moving through, we need to protect Lonnie and Jay - Doug and Evie will be good at that." Lonnie gazed at me, then nodded.

"Makes sense," She said. "Let's go."

SFO-OFS

We managed to get half an hour into the search before we were discovered. We had got through the lowest floor of the dungeons, and were making our way up the stairs when our luck ran out. 

"Queen Mal - we are truly honoured," The guard gave me a low bow - somewhat mocking - then looked past me. "Princess Evie, Princess Lonnie, Prince Jay and..... someone else."

"My name is Doug."

"Like it matters," The guard rolled his eyes. "Queen Mal - we have orders to take you to The Queen. You and your friends will come with us - do not try to resist, or we will....." Before he could finish speaking, I launched a quick series of pushing spells, then looked over my shoulder.

"RUN!" I hissed. Evie gave a quick nod, then she, Doug, Jay and Lonnie took off running. I looked back at the guards, and froze.

"You know that could be considered cheating," I said quietly, staring at the array of three crossbows now pointing at my head.

"We're bad guys," The lead guard shrugged. "What did you expect?" I glanced along the line, weighing my chances of taking all of them at once before just one of them could get a shot off, and decided against it.

"So what happens now?" I asked. "You take me to mother for a spanking?" 

"Her Royal Majesty is busy at the moment, so we will take you to a holding cell," The guard gestured with his crossbow. "Please walk that way. Do not attempt to run, to escape or otherwise deviate from our instructions."

"Or what?" I asked belligerently. "The Dark One clearly wants me alive so you aren't going to hurt me or kill me."

"The Queen has made it clear that, while she would like a reunion with her daughter at the first opportunity, she considers the safety of her Fortress, and her Island, paramount," The guard paused, then smiled. "In short - we can, and will, kill you if provoked."

"Okay, okay," I rolled my eyes. "Keep your hair on." I glanced upward at his head - his very bald, shiny head. "Oh - sorry. Too late." The guard waved his crossbow at me, but didn't fire.

"Move. Now." 

5x08 

"FLAGARA!" Flinging my arms forward, I yelled the incantation out as loudly as I could, and was rewarded with a wall of fire shooting down the corridor, blasting the guards backwards. 

"AQUARA!" Evie - stood next to me - sent a torrent of water following behind the wall of flame. As it washed the guards down to the lower level, she looked over her shoulder. "Jay, Lonnie - are they okay?" 

"Yes, Evie," Lonnie called back. She and Jay were helping Snow White, Queen Belle and The Fairy Godmother along the corridor. We'd found them five minutes earlier, and now were fighting a running battle to try to get back to the underground tunnel.

"Where's Doug?" Evie called, looking forward to check the passage ahead of us was still clear.

"He's watching out backs," Jay replied. "We think the guards are going to come from above, but just in case we're wrong, he wants to keep us safe."

"Okay," Evie nodded, then looked back at me. "Let's move."

"Yes, boss!"

SFO-OFS

"FLOTUS!" I watched - in slight awe - as Evie levitated the last guard into the air, then knocked him out by bashing him against the wall. She released her spell, and he fell unconscious to the floor.

"You've been practising," I said with a grin. 

"Doug likes it when I do my best," Evie said with a salacious grin. "Get's him all hot and bothered."

"Oh gods I did not need to know that!" I glared at her. "Why do you tell me things like that when you know it bugs me?"

"Because I know it bugs you!" She grinned at me, then - as the others caught up to us - walked towards the corner that would lead us to the trap-door down to the ladder. I followed her a few steps behind, then ran into the back of her as she came to a dead stop.

"Hello, mother," Evie said in a quiet voice. Peering round my best friend's head, I let out a sigh.

In a line, between us and the trap door to freedom, were five people. Cruella D'ville and Jafar were stood either side of the trap door. And, in a line in front of them, Princess Jane was flanked by The Evil Queen and The Dark One herself.

5x09

I know what you are thinking. Well - not exactly, obviously - I am not psychic. Psychics don't exist, no matter what the tabloids tell you. And they tell you a lot - along with a rise in religion, the twilight of the human race brought a rise in belief in more supernatural phenomena. Psychics, witches, warlocks, ghosts, demons - more people believed in them than at any point in history since the dark ages.

But my guess is that you are probably thinking "Why are they on this quest? How are they going to escape? What was the point of going to The Isle if they are just going to return with three people?" 

Well - I have been missing out parts of the story. When we searched through the first level of the dungeons - before I was captured and my friends escaped to return and rescue me - we found a lot of loot. Some we took out of guard rooms, store rooms and so forth - for reasons that were not entirely clear, the lowest levels of the dungeons also housed some of the treasure rooms - and some (as gruesome as it sounds) we took from the corpses in the cells. While Maleficent may have been the master of all evil (you generally don't earn a moniker like "The Dark One" without doing something to earn it) she was apparently not the master of tidying up after herself.

Between the five of us, we had found four magic swords (between +1 and +5), six suits of armour, nearly two thousand credits in jewels and gold and three books on the history of Auradon that purported to contain spells lost to the world. We hadn't read them - stopping to study a history book when you are assaulting the fortress of the most evil queen in the realm is not recommended - but they seemed genuine enough.

After Evie had pulled me out of the cell, and we had continued exploring and found more loot, treasure and booty. We had agreed that we would take anything we found back to The Oasis and decide how to split it up then - until then, we split it between the five of us so that if the worst happened and one (or more) of us was killed, we would at least be able to salvage something from the experience.

So far our experience gain had been minimal - all we had really done was search places and fight the odd guard or so. Hardly worthy of epic story or song and our experience tallies reflected that.

But - to be honest - I was having more fun than I had had in a while. It felt a bit weird - I was at least fifteen years or so older than most of the kids I was fighting along side - but at the same time, we managed to meld together as a single group in a surprisingly easy fashion. Especially Evie - I felt like I had known her for years, rather than the week since we had first met.

Even the prospect of facing the most evil, heinous army of darkness didn't fill me with fear - well, not a lot of fear - because I knew that I was with people who had my back.

And while the general tone of my diary so far would suggest that I am going to say something like "which is why Evie's betrayal came as such a surprise" or "which is why it was so devastating when I realised I was wrong."

Not this time.

5x10

"Mal," The Dark One looked me up and down "Still haven't grown into your body, I see." I gazed back at my mother, then smiled.

"Mother," I replied in the same - slightly bored - tone she had used. "Still hanging around with your lose minions, I see." I saw Evie smother a grin, while Cruella and Jafar both bristled.

"Have some respect for your betters!" The Evil Queen snapped.

"I will let you know if I see any of my betters!" I snapped back. This time Evie didn't bother smothering the grin. Instead she laughed out loud, while Jay and Doug both sniggered.

"Careful, girl - you're not too big to put over my knee," Maleficent gave me a dark look.

"That's true," I looked her up and down. "You do have a rather ample...... lap." Another burst of laughter behind me, while my mother's gaze turned even darker.

"Mal," Jane, grasping a slightly dinged up magic wand, stared at me intently. "We will let you go - all five of you - but you can't take them with you." She gestured at the prisoners we'd rescued.

"How about we let you live, and you let us take our friends home," Evie said. 

"Shush Evie," The Evil Queen said in a sing-song voice. "Adults are talking."

"Could've fooled me," Doug said from his position beside Snow White. The Evil Queen glared at him, then looked back at Evie.

"This is your new beau?" She quirked an eyebrow at her daughter. "The son of a feeble idiot and a whore? Couldn't you.... urk." I blinked, then blinked again, trying to replay what had happened in my mind. For a second, I was tempted to reply the video recording of the last few moments, just to make sure I had seen what I had seen.

The Evil Queen - one of the most feared beings in Auradon, a woman who had terrorised two generations and brought Snow White to the edge of death - had a knife sticking out of her chest. The handle of the knife was inlaid with pearl - something I recognised very well because I had given to Evie for her last birthday.

She looked down at the knife, then back up at her daughter. Then, without another sound, she fell over backwards, dead.

"You killed her," Cruella said, staring at the corpse on the floor.

"What are you? The Narrator?" Lonnie asked from behind us. 

"Are you going to let us - all of us - go, or are you going to face your own mortality?" Evie asked in what I admit was a surprisingly calm voice. 

"YOU DARE TO DEFY ME?" Maleficent's voice echoed through the passage at an almost deafening pitch. She raised her staff and pointed it at Evie. "YOU DARE TO DEFY THE QUEEN OF DARKNESS?"

"Yes," Evie raised her hands and pointed them at my mother. I followed suit, aiming at Jane. Behind us, Doug and Jay raised their swords, Lonnie raised a dagger and - much to my surprise - Snow White and Belle both raised swords while The Fairy Godmother raised her hands. "So - Dark One - what's it to be?"

5x11

"CARADAN THEOL MERAMA!" The Fairy Godmother called out, and a moment later, the shield sparked into life around the island, sealing it off once again. The Fairy Godmother continued to point the wand at the island, then with a final flourish she lowered it and turned to face me and Evie.

"My Queen, Lady Evie - The Shield is once again up and secure, and Auradon is once again safe," she said dramatically, "at least for now. For who knows what tomorrow will bring, and what those evil villains will think up next."

"Thank you, Fairy Godmother," I replied with a bright smile, then looked at the rest of The Crystal Worriers as a series of fanfares went off above us, signalling the end of the quest. Almost at the same time, I saw my avatar's experience jump 25,000 points and my credits rise by 5,000 points. 

"So," Evie turned to me, "shall we go home?"

5x12

Banksy met me in The Cyberbyte Cafe the following day. 

"The others all had something else to do," she explained, "but I wanted to talk to you before we went our separate ways, for two reasons." She reached into the bag she was carrying and withdrew the wand I had last seen in the hand of The Fairy Godmother.

"It turns our that the quest had a hidden bonus," she said with a smile, "none of the others wanted it, since none of them is that interested in magic. I have never been that interested, but the wand is incredibly powerful and it is tempting enough to learn."

"So why ask me first?" I asked, curious.

"Because you saved my life when we were facing off against your mother - against The Dark One," she said with a shrug, "and I always pay my debts." She held the wand out, and I looked at it. 

"Are you sure?" I reached out, but didn't take the wand. She gave a single nod.

"While I can't be certain, I am fairly sure this is an artefact," she said in a voice that was almost a whisper, "I looked it up last night, and the only records I can find in the history of The Oasis are The Rods of The Five Wizards, The Elder Wand and something called The TCE but even that wasn't fully described." I looked at it again, then took it and slipped it into my jacket.

"Thank you," I said sincerely, then I frowned, "so what was the other reason?"

"I was hoping to get an extension on my homework, since we have been a little busy this week," she smiled at me, "I have almost finished the paper on The Franholt Expedition, but I just need another day to look up the last of the references." I gazed at her for a few moments, then I realised why it felt like I had known her for so long.

"Susan?"

"Miss Gray," she replied, then grinned, "I promise I won't tell anyone. Not even the others know. I just wanted to check that my guess was right." She smiled, then stood up and walked out of the cafe, leaving me staring after her.

5x13

When I returned to Avonlea, and my house, later that afternoon, I did some research on the wand that Banksy..... that Susan had given me. She was right - it was an artefact, and one that had been long rumoured to exist, although no one knew where it might be, given the plethora of Disney planets throughout The Oasis.

The Fairy Godmother's Wand was a source of powerful magic, both offensive and defensive. It could transmute matter, provide an almost impenetrable shield that would last for hours at a time and could allow you to fly, walk on water and levitate while hold in it, and it could fight off almost every other magic wand in the simulation. It had some limitations of course - you couldn't generate money (the programmers at GSS were not stupid) and you could not transmute matter into anything of greater value than it already had (again - not stupid) unless you were in a quest, where it would vanish at the end anyway.

I was curious how much research she had done before handing this over to me, because this was a phenomenal gift, and I was astounded that she would just let me have it. 

However there was one thing I did know - if my investigation in to my mother's gift, and into the attack on The First Wedding - was going to lead me into the world of Potter, and into the Huffledor army, then having a source of magic that was almost unrivalled in The Oasis would definitely be a good thing.


End file.
